House of R - 'The Acolyte' Episodes 1 and 2 Deep Dive, Plus Creator Leslye Headland

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

The force is strong and has returned to the House of R! Jo and Mal are here to give you their opening snapshot into the first two episodes of the anticipated 'Star Wars' drama (10:31). Then they dive deep into the lore and characters that build up to this two-episode premiere (28:37), along with Easter eggs, wig-watches, and so much more! Be sure to check out tickets for the Ringer Residency in Los Angeles this summer! Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which

streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again? Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Predict the spread, total points, and even the game winner. Sign up and get a $25 bonus. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant.

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already trust spectrum business. So visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. You brought me here. We both knew this is where this trip was headed. I didn't know you were still so angry. She killed my family.

She destroyed my life. This is grief. Let it go. You are not my master. I do not. need your permission to go out there and confront her. I deserve justice. You want revenge. Look what revenge us done to your sister. I couldn't save her when you were children. Let me try now.

To House of R. I'm Jordan Robinson. Join me today. I give her her. She gives me me. It's Mallory Rubin. I'm Mallory. How you doing? Joe, don't you think what we do is so stressful? Incredible. May Jacinto impression from Mallory Rubin off the top. We are here to talk about why not both? We're here to talk about one. Always.

I assume that you're just going to scream that 20 times before we're done today. Okay. Yes. We're here to talk about acolyte. I don't know why I just pronounce it that way. Ackolate. episodes one and two. This is your deep dive into episodes one and two of Ackalite.

We also have a very special guest today. We have an interview at the end of the pod today. We got a nice little sit-down chat with Leslie Headland, who's the creator-show runner of this show, wrote and directed the first episode that we're going to talk about today. So stay tuned for that at the end of our rundown of these episodes. Fantastic conversation. between Joe and Leslie.

Make sure you listen to every second of it. It was wonderful. Leslie, like genuinely, I mean, I'll just say this. I'm supposed to talk about program reminders, but I'll just say this. I watched the episodes. I talked to Leslie. I watched the episodes again. I think my second time through a Star Wars show is always like a better experience for me.

But like watching it again with her like insights in my head just really changed my perspective entirely on the show. It was really helpful. So hopefully that is helpful for your, you all here today. Listen, we're here to talk about Ackleight, and we're so excited to do so. Over on The Midnight Boys, Poo, Poo, Poo! They gave their instant reaction to Ackleite already. Fantastic podcast.

A great episode. I really recommend that. Like, loved it. And next week, they'll be back to do the same, but they'll be coupling it with the boys, right? It's a two-for episode that they're doing next week. The Boys. Double pods next week. Two pods.

Oh, two pods. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Who could ask for anything more? Okay. We, of course, will be back to do Ackleit as well next week, but also. Mm-hmm.

House of the Dragon is coming. Yeah. So we're going to be doing House of the Dragon prep next week. A little recap. I don't want to, I'm not going to jinx it. I'm just to say there might be a special guest on that pod, but anything could happen, so I just don't want to overpromise under deliver. So at the very least, you will get prep,

How's the Dragon Prep Pod from us at the beginning of the week? Acolyte, Episode 3, Deep Dive later in the week. And then, Mallory, what else is happening from us? If you count Sunday as part of next week, which I do. Yeah. Steve insert Dragon Screech here. It'll be time for actual coverage of season two, Hot D season two.

We will be rejoining. Our third dragonhead, Chris Ryan, for Talk to Thrones on Sunday nights. Everybody will be able to join us right after the HotD premiere concludes for Talk to Thrones, episode one. And then stay tuned for more programming announcements because we're going to have, as always, an absolute bounty of Hot D pods, not only here with our house of our deep dive, but on the Ringervverse, the Midnight Boys, Joe and Neil and Dave on trial by content, Chris and Andy on the watch.

I mean, the website, Cram and Riley. We're going to have everything everywhere. We'll give you the detailed rundown next week, but get hyped because we are mere days away. It's dragon time. Thrilling. Genuinely thrilled. And there's a Star Wars show on at the same time. Like what, I mean, who could ask for anything more?

Also, just want to shout out Mint Edition crew. They're covering Inside Out two next week. I can't wait for this movie. And the Pixar movie also in the middle of all of this. It's incredible. What a content summer. So I'm calling it the content gauntlet. That's what I've decided to call it.

You can call it whatever you like, but that's what I've decided to sort of, I like the rhythm of it, content gauntlet. All right. Mallory, how can folks keep track of all the dragons, all the Jedi, all the feelings that are coming from all of us in the next couple weeks? Thanks for asking. My first recommendation would be that you follow the pod, follow House of R, on Spotify, or wherever you. you get your podcast, follow the ring or verse on Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, follow all the pods that you're interested on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow the ring reverse on the social media handle of your choosing. We are on

Instagram, Twitter, yes, TikTok. Yes, of course, the inbox is open. You can send your caught inducing emails our way. By the way, speaking of emails, we had a, on the end speaking of House of the Dragon prep. We had a all Thrones, all hot D prep mailback pod just a couple days ago. So catch up on that if you haven't. That's already waiting for you on the feed. Send your emails to Hobbits and Dragons at

gmail.com. And stay tuned. Stay tuned to the pod. Stay tuned to the socials for more programming announcements about exciting exciting things. That await. And we're going to mention one more thing, which we've been teasing, but just to remind you all, we're doing a couple live shows this summer. Hell, yeah, we are. So

if you have not yet, secure your ticket, you still have a chance. Head to the ringer.com. What a great website. Theringer.com slash events. And then you can find the link to get your tickets to talk the thrones live. Tuesday, June 25th. Joe, Chris and I will be there.

We will be having a blast talking about House of the Dragon, talking about Thrones, talking about Westeros, wonderful stuff. We genuinely can't wait. Please join us. And then later in the summer, mid-July, the Rangelo, the ringerverse crew is getting together for ring reverse live. So you have two chances to come hang with us in person in Los Angeles at the L. L. Ray Theater this summer.

Get your tickets now. Love it. Thank you for all of that. Molly Rubin. Speaking of the socials, as you were, if you have not yet watched Benjamin Lindbergs, I saw it on Instagram. I don't know where else you can find it perhaps on TikTok, possibly on Twitter. his video breaking down sort of like the gist of the High Republic, which is what we're going to be talking.

This is the era that this show is set, sort of the tail end of the High Republic. So we're going to be talking about that a good deal. And Ben will be back on future Acolyte deep dives to give us his classic lower segments. So this is a double episode. And Leslie, we got the Leslie interview. We have no Ben this week, but there is Ben content available to you. Great recap from Ben on the ringer.com. What a great website.

So we're really excited to have been on the team going forward. Quick facts. Today, we are here to talk about Ackleit Part 1, Lost, Slash, Found, written by Leslie Headland, directed by Leslie Headland, clocking in at a 43 minutes. And then at a very light, quick, 39 minutes, we've got Part 2, Revenge slash Justice, written by Jason McAilf and Charmaine de Great and directed by Leslie Headlin. Spoiler warning. Have we issued our spoiler warning? Because I was just about to say, I forgot that.

I'm sorry. It was just going to say something spoilery, so I realized that was when I realized we didn't get the spoiler warning. Spoiler warning. We're going to talk about

the first two episodes of the accolait. Joe just outlined that for you. What else, Joe? Anything that's ever happened in Star Wars? Yep. Oops. Anything that's ever happened in Star Wars. It's all on the table.

Be it in a comic or a video game or a Lego minifig set, whatever it may be, if it is canon or if it is legends, we are going to talk about it. So that's all on the table. Not future episodes of the show. Just everything up through Echolite, episode two,

and everything else that has ever happened in Star Wars. There you go. Spoiler warning issue, Joe, I just want to quickly say, loss slash found, revenge slash justice. We got to see the logo come to life with the little red and blue crescent moon shapes. The idea of twins, of course, this twin twist was a huge one. They kept this quiet.

I was like, oh shit. Episode one twist, they pulled it off. And to see that incorporated across the language and the framing and the positioning of the show right there in the episode, names and in the logo, I thought it was really cool. I like those little touches. So we're talking about twins. Are you emotionally prepared to talk about forced diets? Force diads? I mean, simultaneously always and really never.

Great. Let's go to our opening snapshot. At Ali Rubin, you and I have actually not had a chance to really talk about, we've just had a few other things on our plate that we've been doing. We haven't had a chance to download since you've watched the episodes. So I am excited, along with our listeners, to hear your overall thoughts on Acklelight episodes one and two other than the logo and the episode titles. I'm excited to hear yours too because you gave us that delicious little tease about looking at the episodes through a different. lens after chatting with lessons. I can't want to do more.

A certain point of view. From a certain point of view. Yeah. Opening snapshot. I enjoyed the first two episodes. I liked the second one more than the first one. Yeah. And I, it actually took me a little bit to get with the rhythm of the show while watching the first episode.

There was a lot that I liked about it. but there were certain aspects, first of all, like the pace of the show surprised me. So like you revisiting it then another time through after seeing it after seeing the first two episodes once and then going back to watch them both again and having a sense of what the pace was going to be. Because a lot happened really quickly. Like this question of who is responsible for the killings is not really the question, right? And the initial twist that Oshan May are twins.

happens quickly. Learning that OSHA thinks May is dead. Learning that May also thought OSHA was dead. A number of things. I can't like say OSHA still without thinking of OSHA from Game of Thrones, by the way. Just simply cannot. I think about it in the way that I wasn't allowed to wear flip-flops when I worked in the bookstore because of OSHA. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That's also interesting. So they're jam-packed. We go, we planet hop, we go, we go, we planet hop, we go, we go all across the galaxy. We move through places. We meet a lot of characters.

We're getting a sense of a lot of different dynamics quickly, and the mystery is unfolding quickly. And then the question of what happened? What happened in the past? Which we'll obviously talk about at length and in many different aspects of the dual episode breakdown as we go through beat by beat, scene by scene. I think I had to get my bearings with that a little bit.

The pace felt really good and exciting and energizing to me in the second episode on the first viewing and then felt better to me overall when I went through a second time. something about the first episode, the rhythm of it didn't quite work for me. It felt a little like halting in its cadence. I don't quite even know how to explain it. But I don't know if it was like the fact that we got a lot of these, may the force be with you. And then I know the, I have a bad feeling about this came in the second episode.

But we have these moments where obviously like something bigger, more thematically rich, which we'll talk about the centrality of the idea of attachment. Something was like, I'm hearing character say things that I wasn't necessarily expecting to hear them say. And then I think more broadly, the acclamation period for me was, this show is not as different from the rest of Star Wars as I thought it was going to be. That was the big adjustment for me from anticipation, hype, expectations based on marketing and positioning of the show into consuming it.

And there's something about that that I like. like the through line, years and years and years of hubris and myopia in the Jedi order and fear of attachment leading these characters astray that the same mistakes, that their limitations are cyclical. And we did know that this was all about the pathway to the prequel and to phantom medicine. So of course, and we talked about this in our primer pods, like, it could never quite be that separate really ultimately because if you're blazing the to a certain outcome, there's definitionally a tether and a tie. So that part of it, how does history repeat itself in the conversations inside of the episodes about like learning

from our past, studying our past? That's really interesting to me. I do think that I just thought the show was going to feel more tonally distinct. There's stuff that's really different in it, the fighting style, which I thought was awesome, et cetera. Um, so, That was the big, oh, initial episode one response for me. Episode two, that was less of a thing. I have not watched beyond episode two, so I'm curious to see what that, if that aspect of it evolves,

if the tone starts to shift, if the mystery and the propulsive nature of that and the inward assessment coupled with the outward quest does really amplify and heighten, it kind of like darker. Right, because we were told, this was from a Sith point of view. And, like, I don't feel like we're really there yet.

My hope, not having, like, seen everything, but my hope is that there will be more room for that in later episodes. Same. And I think we ended the second episode in a great place. Like, I genuinely am excited to keep watching. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the show. I, like, can't wait to see episode three. I thought a lot of the performances were really captivating.

I think some of the character dynamics, I just, like, cannot wait to talk with you about Soul and OSHA. I just cannot wait. I'm sure we could do it for 15 hours before Steve cut our mics. Like there was a lot that I loved in here. Honestly. It was absolutely wonderful. Wonderful.

And connects to so many. That's the kind of connection to other things that's hard. That I love that thematic connection. And then Pip was just an instant icon. I have absolutely no notes. I thought Pip was just a sensation. I thought of beautiful stuff. So that's a TLDR.

Yeah. I really liked it. I had a, I had some notes on the first episode in particular. And I think for me a little bit of a was my expectation totally in line with the thing we were actually getting, but not in a way that diminishes or dampens my enthusiasm for what's to come. And I think there are a lot of building blocks here to make something really cool over the course of a full season. What about you? Yeah, I think any, we just can't help ourselves, and I'm so sorry that it's the case,

but any Star Wars TV show is going to be held up to our experience watching and or because it felt like so different and so refreshing. But something I remember because they dropped Was it three episodes of Andor at once? It was at least two, if not three. I remember the first episode feeling kind of like you're acclimating yourself to this new world. Definitely. And they dropped several, I think, and I think it was smart for them to drop two here because that first one, you're just sort of like, okay, there are no Skywalker's. When am I?

Where am I? What's going on? What's the rhythm of this show? That sort of thing. And so I agree. The thing that really struck me actually building our notes for today is when I was pulling quotes. for us to like drop into the episode all the ones I wanted to pull over from episode two

and I was just like, except for the very end of episode one but I was like it's not like nothing interesting happens it's just like there's so much exposition and sort of like establishing of the world happening in episode one by design that and I think also by design what you're talking about in terms of it not being as different as you've expected is part of the new normal

that we should expect from Star Wars now that everything is sort of under Dave Filoni's auspices at Lucasfilm like Tony Gilroy making Andor is operating independently, but everything else is sort of coming under this one guiding hand, a la marble and Kevin Feigy, etc. So like that's just something to think about is like by design, I think they're trying to make things that feel more of a piece

rather than sort of what we were hoping, which is like wild and unusual and different flavors inside of one world. I really liked a lot, And I really liked it more watching it the second time. I liked it well enough. And then I really liked it a lot more watching the second time. And I think Li Zhengje as Seoul is like one of my favorite Star Wars performances ever. Like genuinely.

There is something so tender and emotional about him. And something so if anyone listening to this listened to Chris Nandi talk about the show on the watch really this week, Andy had a delightfully Andy a Greenwaldian rant about how uninteresting Jedi are and then I had like a text debate

a debate me coward text exchange with him about that and I I see where he's coming from I largely disagree in that I don't think it's a Jedi problem I think it's something you and I have talked about

on several of these Disney Plus shows which is like a stoicism problem which extends to Bocatan and Boba Fet and Fed and Fadick Shan and Dijaran, like, this stoic archetype is something that Dave Filoni is really interested in. There are a few stoic characters in this show, but, like, in Seoul, a Jedi, we're getting someone who's so un-stoic, who's so emotional. And that is something that I really respond to. So I think Li Zheng-Ji as Seoul is, like, really, and a man was great, you know, and man just in tow when he comes in is, like,

A charisma bomb. Just like absolutely incredible. But I think soul is this sort of like heartstring of the show is something that is just really pulling me forward. I totally agree. There's just an incredibly tangible amount of pathos coming through the screen in every line. And we can save our thoughts on the particulars for when we're contextually talking about the actual exchanges that are unfolding. but the combination of when the thing that is wrenching at him has to do with another person

or when it has to do with himself, how that ties into the questions that the Jedi ask of each other, the limitations and the fears that these strictures place on them, the just very human... Yeah, exactly. Qualities emanating from... Not just the longing and the disdemeanor. spare, but like frustration, you know, with the other Jedi and the decisions that they're making.

Like, it felt so, I got some, even though it is an incredibly different performance, and I think the particulars are really distinct. I, the character that he made me think of the most was Quigon. Oh, a thousand percent. Yeah. And just such a satisfying way that we are obviously very easy marks for because we love Quigon. But this question, and especially when you're paired with like a Paduan who left the order, we don't yet know why. This is another intriguing mystery already established in the show.

I don't get the sense from Seoul in the first two episodes that there's an outcome that we're necessarily heading toward him deciding that life as a Jedi is not for him. But I do think that he's positioned quickly and very effectively as a character who does not believe that every decision that the people around him make is right, which is super. which is so important. And like we love, I mean, we've said this a zillion times. We might as well say it again. Like one of our shared favorite Star Wars stories is The Last Jedi.

And I, one of my big thoughts leaving the first two episodes, one of the things I really appreciate about what the Acculade is clearly interested in doing, like centrally, is interrogating the Jedi. And interrogating the relationship. relationship to the force, to a foothold in society. And I'm hopeful, we both consider Last Jedi brilliant and important. Yes. Star Wars installment and story. And I'm hopeful, though I feel almost foolish saying this out loud given the like really despicable review bombing and response to to the show from the bad faith contingent,

which is very upsetting, though perhaps unsurprising. to see unfolding. My hope is that on that front of interrogating and critiquing the Jedi and trying to hold the Jedi to some account for their hubris, that there's maybe like a little bit more of a willingness to receive that that there was when it was coming from a character like Luke. Now, for us and for people who love Last Jedi, the brilliance of it was that it was Luke. And that was really inextricable from what made it so powerful that Luke would be the character to voice those things.

But I hope that there is this very subversive quality to the focus of this story that I love and that I think is necessary to keep Star Wars big and vast and vibrant and sprawling. And so I hope people are excited about that part of it and willing to engage with that part of it. That would be really cool. Not only do I hope that people are excited about it. I think the thing that I'm concerned about it, and it's too early to get concerned. We're only talking about two episodes here. But like, I know that that's what Leslie wants to do. It is clear in all the interviews she's given and.

And, you know, especially in the chat we had with her that's going to be on the podcast today. How much is she allowed to do that inside of Lucasfilm is the other question? How scared is Lucasfilm of that after the reaction to Last Jedi? So I don't know how much, like, punches will be pulled in this telling or not, you know? This is what I think my favorite thing about the first two episodes is, actually, other than Saul. Mike, I have, of course, that general anxiety as well. living through the sequel trilogy as we all did. Yeah.

I have a lot of confidence, actually, after the first two episodes in that respect. I mean, this is my hope. Something made King Tom and, you know, meditate for a decade. So let's find out what that was. What was so bad that that happened? I do want to talk about really quickly. Wait, watch right at the top? No, we're going to save that.

I mean, I just want everyone to know. I want everyone to know. every now and then, you know, we like to take people behind the curtain, building the outlines prep process. The number of times in the process of building the notes that Joanna acknowledged the Wiggs existence, but literally in the notes, forced herself to wait to comment. I just thought it was hilarious and simultaneously like an admirable show of restraint. and a real indicator that I don't think the restraint is going to last for long. It's one of the first thing I texted you after, like, the trailer when I was like,

Dean Charles Chapman's wig. Anyway, we're going to talk about it. It's definitely not a deal-breaker for me. It's genuinely delightful and hilarious. And blind eyeball, though. Yeah, real sick. I loved it. I loved it.

I loved the eye. Okay. Before we go into our deep dive, which, you know, we haven't even started yet, cool, cool, cool beans for us. I do want to just really quickly talk about Ackleite as a title, which we have a bit in our preview pods. But Ackleite versus Apprentice. I think Apprentice is the word that is most often used both by the Jedi and the Sith alike.

Ackleite is loosely a synonym of Apprentice. But more crucially, Ackleite has a religious connotation that Apprentice doesn't. And so I think it's important to think about that, about, you know, we're always, I think, thinking about the Jedi as religion in a sort of like spiritual way. And then occasionally the Jedi as religion in like a constricting institutional way. But I think if we're thinking of this from a Sith point of view, this idea of dogma, spreading ideology. We're going to talk about that speech at the end of episode one, killing, how do you kill that? ideology, how do you kill the dream, why the word acolyte is used there, managed to holding up some poison like a communion wafer and saying absolution.

Like these are important things that are running through the show. But I think that is why it's acolyte. I mean, acolyte's just also like a sexier word than apprentice, but like that's why the show is called like Acolyde and not Pat-O-Wan. Yes. Yes. And Ackleite is a Sith. Like that is, yes.

Sith Ackleite is a rank in a part of the Sith canon. And then the relate, that will talk about this elsewhere in the pod, but that's an interesting kind of data point in terms of how we is. Skywalker saga Star Wars fans think of the rule of two and the fact that there can be these other tiers of Sith existence will become part of like the tangible text certainly. But I agree with you that not only in addition to that literal aspect, but, it feels like more importantly, actually, the very overt religious presentation of not just following, but that deification and worship

and all-consuming. Yeah. Yeah. Pursuit. Fascinating. The communion wafer for the bunta is a great flag. That was I mean, great scene. Mani. You're the best. Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis,

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Up through August 2026, they're running 100 free sessions for school and community-based organizations near you. Learn more at clinickids.com slash 100KK. That's Clinic with a K. Clinic Kids is registered 5.1.1c3 nonprofit. Let's go now. To our deep dive. Oh, I really forgot about that.

Oh, I missed our Star Wars cues. Thanks, Steve. All right. So part one lost and found is where we're starting. We're starting with an opening scroll of sorts. It's obviously like scrolling on the screen, but it is, you know, a blue font on a star field. Getting us excited. This is what it says, 100 years before the rise of the empire, it is a time of peace.

The Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic have prospered for centuries without war, but in the dark corners of the galaxy, a powerful few. Learn to use the force in secret. One of them, a lone assassin, risked discovery to seek revenge. So we're doing like three, as far as I can count, three key things here. We're establishing the time period for people who have not been listening to every house of our acolyte prep pod. And that's fine. You're allowed to not listen to every prep pod.

It's a time of start peace in the Jedi Order. have like total control over who can and cannot use force in the galaxy. That's like a key part to what's going on here. That's something we talked about a lot in the prep pods. Like who's power, who's allowed to use it. The scroll itself, the language of the scroll, it's not a scroll, the language of the opening graphs here establish that non-regimented force users are suspect in the dark corners of the galaxy, right?

Out on Rim, unknown region, whatever it is, but it's a dark corner. a powerful few in secret. This is my favorite part, this language here, which if we're meant to take this show from a Sith point of view, which I would argue we're not quite in yet, this is not that. This is a, this is Jedi language. This is Jedi propaganda is what it feels like to me. Yes, definitely. And I think that's really interesting.

And then the last, and we're about to learn this more explicitly when we see the May versus Indara fight, is that this is very personal. This is about revenge. right, a lone assassin, risk discovery to seek revenge. It's not an acolyte seeks to prove herself to her master. That's not what this mission is about. It's not only what this mission is about. It's about revenge.

A really loaded word in Starwage, of course, because Revenge of the Sith or Return of the Jedi's original title, Revenge of the Jedi, whatever you prefer. This is a classic George Lucas buzzword. what did you think of this opening moment and do you want to talk to me about concrete BBY numbers? BBY numbers. As you know, I always like to put a very long, like four page long timeline in our docs at the start of a new Star Wars season. But I did not do that here. We can limit ourselves to a bullet point or two.

We all learn and grow. But I want you to room to be your authentic BBY self if you need to. Thanks so much, pal. Yeah, so just to... That would be your droid name, by the way, BB-B-Hifeng Y. It's cute, right? B-B-Y? It's like B-B8. Purple.

All right. Do you have, you know, I built my own B-B? Can you see? I know, it's purple. Yeah. Yeah. LJ8. It's colors, right?

Yeah. LJ8. Yeah, wonderful stuff. Oh, I know my Ruben lore. Don't worry. Had a great time there. Drink some blue milk. It was wonderful.

Got a terrible stomach egg because they ate so much junk food over the course of that. evening, but it was what is, as they say, on billions, it's worth it, Bob! This is all so unbrand for you. I love it. BBI check-in. So the High Republic era runs from 500

to 100 B-B-B-Y. This show is set. 100 years before Phantom Menace. We're in 132 B-B-B-Y, which means we are not only a century before the prequels, that's obviously, I think, for most Star Wars fans, the most important time marker.

But in terms of that High Republic era, and just a second what Joe said, you'll be able to get great downloads on that lore from Ben and hopefully from us on this podcast, all season long. Oh, yeah. We're at the end. We're in the late stages of the High Republic era,

which, given that the High Republic publishing push covers a larger span of time than this and is now, into its third phase. This feels very deliberate to start the screen version at this point where we are nearing the end of the thing

and building toward the more familiar thing. Will we then work our way further back in future shows and films who can say, obviously, eventually we're going very far back. Very far back. Well, beyond the High Republic. If that movie happens.

Can't wait. So that was great. In terms of how I felt about the opening non-scroll card overall, I like it. I always enjoy. That's one of the, hey, yeah, this is not maybe so different from other stars.

Things after all that is fun. It's cool. It's familiar. It feels like you're sinking into a warm bath. You're home again. I do think your point about, oh, that initial note is not a from a Sith point of view on struck me as well. The few, the choice of few, a powerful few learn to use the force and secret. I think few was my, that was what I really latched on to in the opening. Not to go all

Jeff Probst on Jolensky in the most recent season of Survivor where how many is several really became a season long recurring discussion point in a way that I found very amusing. Very amusing. You know, a few is not to.

So we just alluded to this with the idea of the Sithacalyte and the rank, but where do you place view? We might have more characters in the mix than we would normally anticipate, which is exciting. Where do you put few between like smattering and handful?

Like a dust, a light dusting. A dusting. I usually reserve smattering for like when I'm describing my tattoo idol, Zoe Kravitz. It's like a smattering of small little forearm tats. That's what's the vibe I'm trying to cultivate. All right. And the music, like the sounds in the opening? Incredible.

Great stuff. Steve, just want to say that we support your efforts to talk about the score. Suck it everyone else on the mid-eye voice. Thank you. I appreciate that. It was a fantastic podcast and beautiful and important and everyone should listen. And you were within your rights to bring up the score. The score is sick.

It was good. It was very good. Yeah. Very Williams-esque. But like with some cool, because as we discussed in one of our prep pause that like Michael Abels, who's the composer, that he's worked with Jordan Peel on his, like on us and get out so that like horror string sort of element that Mallory just loves horror scores is sort of in here for some of our like dream sequence nightmare stuff that happens in these first two episodes.

It's my horror year, Joe. I'm going to see Alien, fabulous with you and Chris on opening night. I'm so excited. You both promised to hold my hand and cradle, but that's not what happened. Chris was like, I don't think you can hack it. Stay home. And I said, come with me. You can do this.

Yeah. Chris was like, you're actually just not fucking invited. Chris did literally say, I don't think this is for you, Maloney. He did. Tough. It was tough. Okay. Rough one.

A wild Trinity briefly appears. Briefly should have been in all caps. But this is something we kind of deduced from the trailer, didn't we? Yeah. That we had said the only footage, non-flashback footage we had seen of her was from this one fight. And I said, I'm worried. And this is before I'd seen a single minute of the show. You had also called the cast list. Like, where she's way far down on the cast list. Like, yeah. Yeah. You were reading the signs. I jumping to the end of the scene now at the very beginning of it,

but just because we're talking about that, like, we do, we clearly flashbacks are going to be a, I'm, I would say not just minor part of this season based on the setup we've gotten. It feels like, going back to whatever happened with May and OSHA and Seoul and the fire and learning about the Torbin and Adara and the decisions that everybody made, I would be stunned based on the nature of these first two episodes if that was like a scene. Oh, yeah. I just feel like we're going to be spending some time, some time of consequence in the past. So do you think how much more time will we be getting with Carrie-on-Woss?

because one scene, obviously it's not just going to be one scene, but hopefully it's not just going to be two or three scenes either. Do you think there's a chance for multiple additional appearances? I think it's going to be more than one flashback.

Smattering? Yeah. Light dusting of Carrie Ann Moss. I was talking, I remember Sean Fennessey was texting me about his excitement level for the echolite. He's like, his number one thing was Carrie Ann Moss,

and I tried to be like, listen, guy. I hadn't seen, Seriously, I hadn't seen the episode, but I was like, she's way down on the cast list. I do think they're kind of bait and switching people, which I think is a little unfortunate. Like, I understand if you have Karen Moss on your show, you have Trinity doing force foo, like, you want people to get excited about it. But I think a lot of, most people went in expecting that Karen Moss was a main character on the show, and she is the Drew Barrymore of the scene. I think that there's a very, like, modern TV, you know, thrown.

era tendency to, I don't want to, now, I was going to mention another show entirely in a casting decision and a first episode twist, but I don't want to spoil, spoil that. But this is like a thing that people do now. Weirdly, if it had just been Indara dying in the first scene in the show, it might have felt more like that to me, again, accounting for the fact that we, we know from trailers that we'll get at least like a glimpse elsewhere. But the fact that Torben was also killed in the double premiere, that gives me more confidence that this is just a cool and interesting structural choice. I think all of your other points about just limited footage, cast lists, all of that still stand, obviously, in terms of just like relative screen time.

But if multiple people are dying and being eliminated and then part of our journey is going back to understand how we got to that outcome, that's actually interesting to me. Totally agree. All right, let's zoom back. We're on a planet. Yeah. Waita. Waita. Is that we're pronouncing it? Who can say?

I have no idea. I do like how you put this in the dock like a date line like you were reporting on the ground. Capital, U-E-A-D. M-D-D-M-D-D-D-Dash. It's a very planet hopping show, perhaps even more, I think, than the Mandalorian. I think Andy made some good points about... Do you planet hoppy? Did you have...

Did you like that part of it? Did you feel like it was exciting and propulsive? Or were you like, I can't really get my bearing? I just don't know that we spend enough time anywhere to get the true flavor of it versus like, again, Andy was comparing to Andor and just sort of like how we felt a real sense of place for all those places. And this is just like a little bit of like I understand there's a noodle shop on this planet. And I understand that that place is snowy and I understand that. But like, you know, a little, a little hoppy. We've only seen two episodes.

We've already been to, I think, like four different planets. Noodle shop. I'm starting. right now. The recipes on Star Wars.com for the noodles from Lomi Uski noodle shop. I may be mispronouncing that. Are you going to make them? Maybe I'll make them for you when I'm in L.A.

And you're in L.A. And we can eat them together. Should we? Steve sounds like you're not invited to this meal. Steve's invited. Joe and I have to be dining together. Steve's cat is invited. Steve puts sitting sick invite in the Zoom chat.

Should we? I don't know what black vinegar is, but that's one of the. the, one of the ingredients, so I'm excited to find out. Should we pair the noodles with the Count Chocula? Gross. Absolutely foul. No? We are going to be eating some Count Chalka.

Where's your such an adventure? Counttacula feels like an in, like, studio experience that Jemke in mind for social. Yeah. Save that for Halloween. It feels like, noodles. No. The Paula Trades podcast. Is that when we should have Count Chocular?

Did not invoke. Okay. Back in check. First line of this show is, Where's your Jedi? The first line of this show, establishing that every little outposted noodle shop has a Jedi setting vigil,

or at least they are abundance in the galaxy. What did you feel? I love this, and I thought this was, in perhaps contrast to some of the clunkier exposition, that we'll get to. Very deft

shorthand to explain what's different about where we are now. Because contrast that to say, I mean, really any number of things, but like think of Obi-Wan or rebels, like Inquisitor-era Star Wars stories where this question, if posed, where's your Jedi,

means that you are hiding someone who is evading, seeking to evade capture here. This is about abundance. This is about a carefree, a sprawling life, not about fearing pursuit or capture or discovery. So that just struck me as a really quick and tidy way to say this is a different time in the galaxy. As Ben pointed out in his excellent recap, man walks into a bar, canteena, noodle shop, etc.

is the way a lot of these stories start. I thought of Mando immediately. Do you think anyone in the noodle shop? Yeah, I've ever said, I can bring the noodles in warm or can bring the noodles in cold. I am going to text that to you. I'm going to bring the middle to the office, and I'm going to say, I'm bringing him warm and I can bring him in cold.

And then, in Dara, Carrie Ann Moss giving us cool, calm collected, like her turn to the camera, all of that, great stuff. You're like, this is why you hire Carrie and Moss. Absolutely. And May did not seem nervous right at first.

Seemed very much like... I actually kind of disagree. You think she seems nervous? When she lowers her voice and says, strength. Like that feels like someone posturing confidence.

I felt like the initial master and Dara we have unfinished business. Yeah. She had maybe the nerves then creep in, but really throughout the way that she engaged, like that's a scary fight.

Right? If you're May and you're challenging Indara and she doesn't shrink from it. So there was an element of like, Yeah, you have to like, talk, what's your pregame routine? You got to, like, talk yourself up and get ready? She has practiced these lines.

She did seem. Don't you think she's practiced these lines in the mirror? She uses them again later on Torben. There is a rehearsed quality to it, certainly. And we have unfinished business and attack me with all of your strength are overt lifts from Kill Bill. So, yeah. Love getting the Kill Bill energy throughout here.

The My Child return from Indara was interesting, too. on the other side, like feels like a very deliberate, let's remember how the master and apprentice, master, paduan dynamic goes. And that it's not just always one of tutelage. It can be one of superiority. It can be one of making the person on the other end feel like they're not ready for something. And Daris says, Jedi do not attack the unarmed. Like a moment to make us think about this era of Jedi where they're supposed to just be peacekeepers,

true peacekeepers Mace would do still thinks they're peacekeepers, the prequels. He says we're keeper of the peace, not soldiers. I don't think so, buddy, but nice thought. But they used to be,

allegedly, Keepers of the Peace or Space Cops, if you prefer. And I think this, like, this yes you do, obviously just like loaded with personal enmity from May. And then

later, like, underline in the unmas. asking moment when Adara says, like, you, like, to not just her face, but the tattoo on her forehead. So, like, what are you doing here? Like, you know, we're going to, we get this information actually fairly quickly via some, some, uh, slick and some clunky exposition along the way. But like, just to give us this right at the beginning is so, so tasty to me, you know? The, um, the mace, the mace references are great. The thing I always think of there is the, The Voyage of Temptation, Sotene, Anakin conversation that I love so much.

We are protector's highness. Yours at the moment. We fight for peace and Sateen saying, what an amusing contradiction. That's the one that I always think of there. That's so good. But the yes, you do, this allusion so early to whatever, like, horror. This is not just something unfortunate that happened. It's not just their family, is their entire village.

The village. Wiped out. what role the Jedi had in it in responding to it, in causing it, and covering it up? These are questions we will be asking as we go through the two episodes today. These are questions we will be asking moving forward. But right away to set our minds racing in that respect, like, what is she identifying? And what is that recalling and bringing up? That was a, ooh.

And I just thought this fight was awesome. Oh, yeah. The way that, like, tactile, that a man land, her stunt double and, like, love a mask design so that the stunt double can just, like, really cook. But the flips and the kicks and the turns and, like, all this sort of, and like her hair whipping around and all of, like, all of that movement. Yes. And then in Dara's stillness in response to it and just, like, the economy of her gestures and movement and just sort of like stepping to the side. all this sort of stuff. May's, and we're going to come back to this a couple of times,

but May's, like, frantic grabs and preoccupations with the lightsaber and Indara clocking that is a fascinating dynamic in all of this. What is your... What is your take on... I just want to skip to this, because I am actually very curious about this. So May and both the Soul and the Indara fight is grabbing for the lightsaber on these Jedi's hips and missing. But when she is the opportunity to pick up Indara's lightsaber from the ground, she leaves

it there. So there is, you know, an abundance of stories about the Sith and Bleeding Khyber crystals. The Darth Vader, 2017 comics has, like, I think one of them were famous storylines about this, but this idea of a Sith going, a Sith apprentice or however you prefer, going to a Jedi master. killing them taking their lightsaber, bleeding the crystal.

I don't think there's any specificity in canon. Please correct me if I'm wrong, you might know better than I do, that you have to take it off alive Jedi, or you have to take it off their hip, or you have to kill them with it or anything. Like, that's not part of the rules as far as I know. So what is your

read on why May leaves and Dara's weapon on the ground there? I think it's a great question and clearly something we're meant to flag. Yeah. walking away when it's sitting right there. It's not like she's running out of the joint. Like the camera makes it obvious that she is like

returns her blades to her hands. You know, takes the time to do that. It's not a pension. There's no time. Isn't there? She definitely could have picked it up if she wanted to. She chose not to. Yeah.

It could. I think there are a number of possibilities. It could be, you know, one of the, this is like an unbleeding the crystal purifying the crystals example, but I always love to talk about what Asoka does when she forges her white blades, takes the six brothers bled crystals and purifies them. And part of the reason that that felt like the right thing for her to do was because the crystals were calling to her. So I think there's always a question, whether it's an initial gathering style, forging of your first

blade. And we don't know, right? Like, we don't know, did May ever do that? Like, has that happened for her yet and maybe that's like set aside waiting or is this the path to that? We actually don't know because we have a lot of blanks in the in the history for both May and OSHA. So does she not feel the response that she needs to feel from that crystal? Does it not feel like the right one for her to take? Could be that. I think there seems to be. I feel like we would have a moment of her like I agree. I think that's probably not like. I think there seems to be because we see her like there's the the hip pans and the close grazing moments here, but the most overt one by far comes later in the,

in the soul fight. Yeah. With like the slow-low kind of hip pan. And that made me think is that the one specifically she's seeking. And then more broadly, that connects to one of the things I was trying to track on my second watch. and we'll hit some of this in context as we go through some of the things that Chimer and may discuss together.

You're running out of time. You're running out of Jedi. Like, it seems like there is not just one mission, but there are missions within the missions. Like, I will get one of these skills without a weapon and please our master. That was my interpretation, though, is that you're running out. There seem to be different trials.

You've got four Jedi to kill on your list, and you have to do one of them without a weapon. Not a weapon. Definitely. But then that made me think, are there many tests inside of these trials? Like, is it just that one challenge? Oh, it's like a whole blown Sith scavenger hunt.

Off one of them, you have to pull the lightsaber hot off their hip. Off another one, you have to get them to kill themselves. Like, who knows? Maybe there's a certain, maybe there's a certain order of progression. Maybe the blade that she's seeking needs to, is a, whether it's in her mind or part of the mission that she's been set from mystery. dude who will talk about he, stranger,

according to the captioning of the episodes. Maybe there's a reason that the, the betrayal from one of those four feels supreme and that that would be the right blade. I don't think we can say for sure, but I would be surprised if taking a blade and bleeding a crystal was not

a part of this quest at some point. That would be really, it feels like the panes. on the blade is like setting us up for that. Oh, 100%. I don't know. What's interesting about your... Totally.

What's interesting about your question about, like, has may ever tried to get a chyber crystal or bleederate chyper crystal or whatever? We don't know. We have blank spots here. That feeds into this next part of like who trained you. And then Dara immediately calling in, I have an unidentified force user, really underlining this idea of the Jedi as like cops and gatekeepers of who. Who gets to use a force and who doesn't?

We have to think about Mother Anasea, and by the way, we learn that May Anosha's last name is Anasaya. So is Joni Turner Smith their mom? And if so, that feeds into your hope that there's like lengthy flashbacks, right? Mother Anasaya's line from the trailer that we've been mentioning in most of our prep pods, which is this isn't about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it. So the Jedi as gatekeepers of this power. I don't have you registered.

force user, who are you? I, we, the Jedi, get to know everyone who's using the force in the galaxy. You know, that's the status quo here. Right. And like, it makes you wonder not to get into too much speculation this early about like what we might learn in the past. Because on the one hand, we have the data point that like,

and I have some thoughts on this when we get to this later conversation. Stop me if you've heard this before. OSHA was too old. There were some concerns that OSHA was too old. What's her M count, though? That's my. I don't know. I got around to just like steal her blood. Wrong timeline for that.

Yeah, I guess so. But so on the one hand, the fact that there was concern about the ages and the fact that we know these four Jedi were posted on that on, on, on, on, on Brendok, clearly for some other reason than just recruitment, makes it seem less likely to me that they were there specifically to like retrieve these four sensitive children. And also, like, we don't, we, we have not met. this family, but like the, just the explanation of who the characters are and what we've seen in the trailers, there's this, like, witchy quality. So, like, a presence of the force more broadly across this family unit. So could that line that, that we've latched onto from the trailer have something to do with them going and seeing these four sensitive children and being like, we're interested in one, but not the other? Like, we sense darkness here. That's not for us. And

then Mother Anisea being like, wait, you're going to tell me that, like, you're only going to take one of my kids for your special school and the other one, because of some mind probe you're doing on an eight-year-old, like, doesn't deserve your care and your opportunities. I'm curious if it's something like that. At the very least, it feels like a clash between an institution and, like, wild force users in the wild. Absolutely. Versus the institution, you know.

And I thought it was really notable that Indara didn't activate her com link, didn't call for help just because she was attacked. It was only that. It was only seeing May use the force and realizing that there was a force user outside of their tight net of control that led her to communicate what was unfolding, which just, I think,

the further supports what you're saying, like, that's the threat. Anything outside of their web. And I think, not to get too far into this whole, like, Mother Anasea thing and the witchiness that we've seen from the trailer, but like it goes back then to this idea of like the Jedi institution as like like, you know, the Catholic, like as a religion versus like pagan, you know, celebration of religion in the wild,

that sort of clash. So we'll talk about that if and when we get to it. But I want to mention I love Mays throwing knives. I love that she uses the force to make the knives even more lethal. It's very like black widow to me meets like Mando's whistling birds. meets Anesh from Sixthogros. The way that the knives are just hitting all over our body. Maybe think of Violet from fourth wing.

Oh, nice. Yeah, sure. you're anti? Yeah. I don't, and Dara goes out like a chump in a way that she doesn't need to. She definitely could have stopped both knives.

Absolutely she could have. Yeah. So on the one hand, yes. On the other hand, I do like the fundamental underlying idea that May is using

the Jedi's like mission statement of protection against them and that's, in the same way that she's going to use guilt to conquer the next Jedi on her list.

Like this idea of using their strength as their weakness, that sort of thing, which is a very sithy thing to do. We've talked about this before in Star Wars. But the knife, I mean... No. I agree with you.

It's always interesting to hear the opponent or the foe try to turn something that should be a point of pride, compassion, and warp that against the Jedi. I'm pretty much always interested in that. I do agree with you there. I can't, however, accept. I actually couldn't accept that she couldn't feel the other blade coming with the force and stop both. That just actually doesn't make sense.

So I think that's the kind of thing. It's like little things like that that take us out of a scene. It's the opening scene of the first episode. Then that's in your mind as you're watching the rest of it. And it makes it a little bit harder to embrace a thing

that ultimately we thought was pretty good and interesting. So that was just a little odd. It's also tough in the larger universe where we've seen multiple main characters take lightsabers to the gut and they're fine. And they're fine. Dark, dude, dark bone got cut in half and was, is fine. So like, yeah, I mean, that part too. So like one little throwing knife, albeit to her heart seemingly is like, yeah, right to the, right to the bumper. That's true. It is tough. The old bumper. Like, the other thing is just the adjacency inside of this scene to stuff that was really working. You know, the, not just the you, what are you doing here, like pulling the mask down and

seeing May's face, but specifically the dialing in on the, on the forehead mark. You know, it's not a lightning bolt scar, but it's our version of this. And like, what was interesting about that to me is, and I don't know if this will actually be right or true, but it seemed to me like that was a little, as we collect data points and clues because this is a mystery, I felt like that indicated that the, obviously the mark is going to be a way to tell the twins apart. That's like, that's one part of it. But what that made me think was that May had that already as a kid because, and OSHA didn't and doesn't, because that's the thing that like makes it not only like, oh, I know who you are, but oh, I know which of the twins you are.

And so if she had that as a kid, then what does that tell us? Was she training for something distinct from what Osha was training for. Was she involved in something in her village that Osha was not? Was that part of what led to this... The fracture? Whatever fracture unfolded that tore this family apart.

And what level of awareness did Indara have of that? Like, what level of direct action and culpability do the Jedi have? How many in that group before? Is the you, what are you doing here? I thought you were dead? Or is it you, what are you

doing here. I, I, I knew you were alive and I thought you were, like, why are you coming out of hiding, the woodwork? Absolutely could be that. I definitely could be that. I think there's something on the Torben timeline front that, like, makes that seem more likely to me. Delighted, and I hope it's a wig-based analysis, and I can't wait to hear. Lamentably not, but it is that we learn that he's, the vow for him that he's been in that, say, for 10 years. 10 years. Yeah. So like, we know that this whole period of time is 16 years. So what happened to the fire? is your question. Okay.

Yeah. He didn't go into the... Did something happen in the six years? He didn't take it after O'Sha left the order. Which was only six years ago. 10 years ago. Did something happen in the six years or six years the amount of time it takes for guilt to eat away at you? Oh, to the point where your hair looks like that?

Listen. I support all hair lengths. Okay. You did... Come on. You do not... You might support all hair lengths, but you don't support this wig. and don't pretend you.

Okay. You referred to him in the talk at one point as bewigged. I was like in tears. It's a word. Okay, listen. I just love it. I love it. We got to get out of this noodle shop.

So let's just yada, yada, yada and say that like May looks not entirely pleased to have killed Indara. She looks a bit conflicted. And then she also does not kill the bartender slash owner or whatever when she sees that there's a little kit there. So, May not. not fully rotten to the core yet. There is what?

Some good in her? What? Okay. Well, and of course this would make sense if part of her origin story is being stripped away from her family. Right. Because she doesn't know what happened on the other.

She doesn't know that OSHA's alive either. So she thinks, presumably, that her entire family is dead. And she's like, I know what it's like to be a kid who grew up having your family torn away from you. Makes sense. Tracks. Only other thing I wanted to say about that opening scene was,

because we talked about that idea of compassion, like, being wielded against the Jedi. Yeah. It makes me think about, like, the scene we're going to get into in a few minutes here. But, like, our first description in the show that we hear of Soul is how lucky these younglings are to have such a compassionate teacher. That's our introductory character trait for him. I just want to cry about Soul all the time. I just feel so tenderly towards him.

and I am so scared for him. Okay. Now we are leaving the noodle shop and we are going to meet the main character of this show. It's Pip. I'm using my John Snow, my injured John Snow voice. Pip, Pip, Pip. Sweet Pip.

Okay, actually, the main character of the show is OSHA. But, Mallory, I'm just going to hand the mic over to you if you want to tell me your feelings about Pip. I just thought Pip was an instant star. Every now and then you have the pleasure of seeing a character who understands the assignment. A performer who choose the scenery. Pip was just sensational.

So cute. You instantly are concerned about Pip. Yeah, versatile, like handy, good pal, companion, communicative, lots of interesting warbles and trills and chirps. I thought that when OSHA ripped Pip's head off in a later scene, it was unacceptable and outrageous, even though I was wearing. how your sympathy stores, OSHA would survive that moment. But it seems like part of his function.

But still, like, were you mollified? Were you mollified when she then later like tenderly tucked him into her little hip pouch when they were assuming crashed? Yeah, fastening the latch on the hip pouch to make sure that he was safely tucked away before they crash. As they crash. That was sweet. Okay. That was sweet. I love Pip.

I will be. I assure you that as soon as Pip March is available, I will be, I will be securing a pip of my own. I'm sure Adam has already preordered it for some occasion coming coming up. Okay. So we meet OSHA. She wakes as if from a nightmare. If we're paying close, close attention, we can immediately see that this is a different person, it's different hair, no forehead tattoo. But like, is this a flashback?

Is this a vision of the future? Right. You know, we find out, like, pretty quickly that this is a twin, but, like, were you taken in? You say you were surprised by the episode one reveal. Were you taken in in this moment? where you like, this is definitely the same person. Had the exact journey that you just described the, oh, I wonder if we're in a different point in time or wait, wait, what?

Is there more than one person? It was in the very close to here, like, sister moment that it was like, wait, what? Yeah. Okay. So that's what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So we get conversations between Felick, the, her fellow, what is it, mechneck. And we're, guys, guess what? Your favorite pals, the Trade Federation are here. Trade fed. Fun times. Triggering. You love to see them.

I actually thought that, I honestly thought that they were a riot. When they're like the Jedi, showing up, like, ugh. This is great. And then the female of the two, seemingly female of the two, or she was just like, you don't have to mind trick us. I'll tell you where she is. Yeah. As soon as the hand goes up, let's get out of here. Happy to tell you what you need to know.

And again, like, interesting timeline clues, right? Like, trade fed never used shields or in a time where that kind of thing is, like, just not the daily requirement as you make your way about the galaxy. So little things like that were interesting about the scene, too. What did you think about just seeing OSHA, given that we learn, you know, that OSHA left the order six years ago, this kind of life, like choosing to live this life. What did you think of that? as far away from Corrason as she can possibly get. Seems like she's... I think Corrason's pretty fucking Ugo, honestly.

There's barely any trees. Why would you live there? It's a planet that's just city. You need like a plum tree in the yard to make your barbecue sauce. Yes, you need some nature, man. It's a planet that's just city. Great summation. I think that sucks.

It's just layers of city. That sounds terrible to me. But listen. She's clearly like licking her wisconsin. She, I mean, she later says that leaving the Jedi order was her decision, but she has chosen to go as far away from Khorasan as possible. She doesn't even seem to, like, socialize that much, I guess, with her fellow mech next, right? She doesn't go, like, party on the smuggler's moon with them. And she's doing a job.

She was like, where were you? But we know at least she partied one night to get that debt. She sure did. But she's out there doing jobs that, you know, our two units are supposed to be doing, like, under the radar, all of this sort of stuff. So yeah, she just seems like very... Yeah, yeah. I liked this. It simultaneously felt like an actual,

like an inversion of a Star Wars trope where we tend to think of, you know, a character like, Power Converner to Ashi Station. Like, this is the thing you want to escape. Right. So that you can go on your grand adventure so that you can heed your call. Though it did remind me so powerfully of Asoka

after Asoka left the order. Now, Assoca wasn't hiding, so that was different. Of course not. The stretch where Asoka is, you know, like living on the land, working the farms. It really, really felt like reminiscent of that. As OSHA is stealing jobs from our two units, you know, on the XRX. Did you have a Doctor Who moment when they were out on the outside of the ship? I was like, this is where a demon comes to kill them or something like that.

That was my. Yes. And I had another doctor. Who moment because I thought the, when we get to the prison bring, I thought the, um, speaks electronically. Yeah. Convict number three, it looks like a centauran. Oh, yeah.

Like a tech augmented centauron. Oh, my God. I love that you can just say that now. Are you proud of me? I'm so fucking proud of you. Actually, I was just thinking of the hound here because the, like, oh, fire. Yeah, the fire is as hot water burn, maybe. Yeah, it's a bummer.

So the fire happens. sends OSHA into an unfortunate mid-job traumatic flashback. That's just like not when you want to have a traumatic flashback. Whilst hitting on the whole of a ship in vacuum? Yeah, it's not ideal. She remembers something and then the closed captioning really helps us out here in terms of like what we're listening to. We hear young OSHA say,

May, what are you doing? And then a girl, I won't let you leave. Mama, help me. No, mama, young OSHA screaming. So this feels like the fire that killed. her mothers and she thought her sister and all of her village. This is like what she thinks of any time she sees fire. So.

Genuinely very sad. The trade fight, the Jedi are here, the trade fight, say, ugh. And this is when we activate the Yord Horde. Yord Horde. Yord Horde. I have seen it all over the internet. It is catching fire for good. old Yord Fandar.

Catching fire. Hopefully not in front of Oshah. Not in front of Oshah. She will have a stroke. So listen, Yord is here. He's only been with us for a few days. And the Fandar fandom is just really,

is really popping. We got an email from Jordan. We got most of our emails for about Yord, by the way. This is so funny to me. I love this. Charlie Barnett, you are a legend for taking your kid off

in a Star Wars show. Okay, so Jordan wrote, Oh, Yordy, the hymbo's have a ride to Horny Star Wars. Thank you, Yord. More please and thanks. Incredible.

Go sign. Yord, who's a knight and Tassi is happy to tell you. Oh, eager. As he is happy. A freshly minted knight. Yeah.

And Tassiloa, his Padawan, I do not get good by. off of her, by the way, come sweeping in wearing sparkling, pristine white robes. We got an email from Kelsey about this, which I want to read, but I think this costuming is, I mean, it's obviously intentional because the High Republic Jedi, look, wear different clothing than the Jedi that we're used to. But Kelsey says, I couldn't shake this distracting thought the entire premiere that they're wearing costumes.

I don't believe they're actually wearing the clothes, particularly the Jedi. The colors are too crisp. The fit is just so, the hair perfectly quaffed. There is a too perfect quality that simply doesn't feel lived in other than some gorgeous creature design. This didn't bother me in any other Star Wars Disney Plus series, but I feel like I'm watching toys tell me I'm crazy. So what I'll say to Kelsey is like I don't entirely disagree. And oftentimes in sci-fi fantasy shows, being too clean does bother me. It does not in the case of especially like Yor and his Padawan here because this like idea of,

of crisp white officious by the book Jedi who have shiny boots and pristine robes because they don't fight and they're not out there in the muck and the mire. There is a time of peace and they are just like tidy little peacekeepers. That actually really works for me. How do you feel about it? I agree.

I think it's visually drawing intentionally. Yeah. And it's helpful in cementing that when late. we'll talk about that broader moment more when we'll get there, but just seeing your steam is robes. And I know you're excited to talk about the flick of the robe when he stands up. I have already made a gift of it for myself. I would expect nothing less.

An incredible book. This is, I think, completely of a piece with a character like Cyril in Andor Oh, yeah. Tailoring and putting and changing the piping of his uniform. 100%. Like what that represents to Yord. And there's a part of me like, we've got a lot of notes on the way that Yorne conducts himself in the first couple episodes. Like, again, that's by design.

There's a part of, there's a part of me based on what we hear between Yord and OSHA in this exchange where it's like, maybe it was really hard for him to reach night. Oh, right? It seems like clearly that it was hard. Yeah, you finally did it. Yeah. And so that like makes me, there's a part of me. then my heart goes at him and it's like, he should be proud. Like he did it.

But then as we'll talk about it in other reasons, it's like, oh, wait, but. Yeah. Like, it's the symbol of what he's achieved to him. Yeah, and he's very proud of it. Okay. Yeah. This is our last Yord email, I promise. I think that's true.

Yes. Okay. From Alex, who says, is you're the biggest herb Jedi we've ever seen? Feels like he could give Cyril Karn, as you mentioned, Cyril, a run for his money even. Okay. This is where I say, I don't know what Herb means. it seems like sniveling little rule follower from like context. Context.

Urban Dictionary says someone who tries too hard to be cool and overzealous poser when you think you're on some next ship, but you're really on some bullshit. And from what I can determine from digging around the internet, because I was really felt dramatically uncool that I did not know what Herb meant, Herb Jedi. It seems to be New York-based, like very regional slang. Have you encountered as someone who. grew up closer to New York than I did. Herb as an insults for someone.

I have. Okay, great, cool. This was some of the people in Maryland said as well. But I loved this journey for you. Sorry. There's definitely some California slang that I could have hung with. But Herb did not make it out to the coast. So I apologize.

Anyway. Okay. I love this moment, how Yord is sitting on Osh's bed as, like, stiff as possibly could be. And then just like the way he gets up. Like I hope that Charlie Barnett like practiced that like 900 times before he executed it is just so awkward and stuffy. And I feel so tenderly towards him while also being deeply annoyed by him.

These are my complex yorred feelings. This is an amazing moment. She's just like so happy to see him and she's so loose and she's just like shoving him on the shoulder affectionately. And he's like, he's, I think, because I think Charlie Barnett, who I know from Rush Doll and Tales from the City is like an incredible performer, I think he's giving us actually not always, but definitely here, a really complicated reaction from Yord. Because I actually do think he's like happy to see her. I think there is this like unspoken, like, we dug Cole together. We were paduans together sort of energy between them.

we like hooked up like what do you maybe what is the history here it definitely seems like I don't have a history he was very excited to find out she had a twin um so I don't know he's like me maybe that one won't dump me or reject me I don't know oh my god yeah there was a even though he is being so formal and he's like putting on the airs of authority there are those little moments where he breaks where the facade cracks and you see the little smile and he's he's not only proud of what he has achieved, but he's proud that someone he knows, who knows him, can see that, which is, like, was, I thought very sweet. I agree with you.

There was a, there was a lot at play here. But then it does make, like, the, the shift into full on unyielding, I will chase you, arrest you, insist that you should be in restraints. Harder for me to wrap my mind around. Like, is you're a character who, it just, honestly, in a way that makes me eager to just learn more about him and understand him better. not in a way that I thought was odd or like out of sync, but I'm like, what does that tell us about yours?

Is it that he's a, just a by the book rule follower? Is it that he is so, because there's a tenderness when he brings up the, like when they talk about their past here, when he brings up attachments to those we have lost are the most difficult to let go, there was a real tenderness in that. And then that makes you wonder, well, are there things in his own past that he has to really like tamp down and not allow himself to access? And that then creates a higher wall.

Yourne looks like he's about to like pop at all times. Because if you track this and you should, he is so quick to pull his weapon. Like especially in contracts to what everything we get with Indara and this idea that, you know, and like soul hardly ever pulls his weapon. right? So it makes sense that he's like a brand new night and he's sort of like insecure about his if he had to work really hard to get there and he's like insecure about belonging there. But you're being so tightly wound and constantly trigger happy makes me nervous. Yes. Do you think this dynamic, this swing between sort of secretly pleased to see you slash chasing you down to the corners of the galaxy? would have worked better for you if OSHA said you're my friend

and yours had said you're my mission would that have a mission Attached us to those we have lost are the most difficult to let go as you flag

attachment is like the thesis of this show this is it please stay tuned to what Leslie say about attachment it is like wildly profound and wonderful in the interview

that we have with her it's so good and this is one of the things that we have both always aligned on in how we think about Star Wars and view Star Wars. It's such a lament we share about the Jedi Order.

So I love that this is at play here. Tassie, who's like somehow even less diplomatic than you're, like it's just like a painful interrogation slash exposition dump here that I really didn't like. It's so funny, I was reading, I forget what it was.

I think it was maybe Ryan Erie on Screen Crush talking about this idea of like a scene where two characters who experienced something together talk about it in a room like remember how you and I did like we know we both know this happened

no no but the reason I bring it up it's not great here the reason I bring it up is because later when OSHA and Soul do it when she says we've had this conversation so many times it works perfectly so it has to do it like

because that's an emotional truth that's driving that exchange and what's happening here here with Tassie and Yord and Oshah is like Yord saying your training was difficult to say the least. It's simply there to catch us up as the audience and everyone in the room is in possession of the facts. And that's just not emotionally compelling. So we feel that it is there purely for function. And that's just not as interesting.

They brought it an eyewitness into her like living quarters onto the ship. It seems like not due process at all. But like, um, astonishing stuff. I believe that O'Sha withdraws from membership from the Yord, And she asks him if he really thinks that she could do this and he, the herb that he is, sadly says it doesn't matter what he thinks. And Tessie, who I already did not like, how did you feel about her putting her little, her little hands all over Pip? That's violating. A scandal.

It is a scandal. Call of galactic proportions. The media. And then, listen, I would. I would criticize Jordan Tassi for putting OSHA on this prison transport without going with her, except everyone in the galaxy does this. So, yeah. Yeah. This is just a, this is just a classic Star Wars setup.

Why would we ever personally escort our prisoner anywhere? Why would we do that? Oh, man. The, if I recall correctly, Master and Dara advised the Jedi Council to discontinue your training when you were. when you were what? Like did something specific happen? Right. And then she insists it was her choice to leave.

Yeah. Yeah. So what did she do? Yeah. When you were rejecting me for that date I asked you on and I reported you to the council. Oh, no. Yard. Yard.

Don't be an insult. All right. Let's go to Khorasan. Okay. I know you don't want to. I know you hate Korson, but it's pretty ugly. It can't be like, it can't be as beautiful as Scariff. You know, we're not supposed to want to spend time in the hustle and bustle of bureaucracy.

I don't know. Some of those, like, anyway. It is interesting to see how, like, Ben and Ben talked about this on our one of our trailer pods. How, again, just different the Coruscite. The skyline is. Yeah. How it's lower. Cool.

Lower than it becomes. Yeah. Okay. More trailer content for us. The Youngling Class with Master Soul. We got most of this in the trailer. And at the time you flagged a lot of the language. Close your eyes.

Your eyes can deceive you. We must not trust them as like, Obi-Wan to Luke and a new hope. Asoka to Sabine and Asoka. But this is a message to both the audience and himself about the twin thing, right? Your eyes can deceive you. Yep. Just because you can identify this woman who looks exactly like the woman that doesn't mean.

Or just because you thought you saw a twin die in a fire, it doesn't mean you actually did. So there's a lot going on. And then I loved this next part. This part is not in the trailer. Think of diving into a great ocean. Give yourself over to its weight. Its stillness, its uncertainty, and tell me what comes into your mind.

I love, I mean, we've heard water imagery with the force before and like off, like, we could think a lot about like Luke on Octo or whatever, the rhythms of nature. But this idea that in the High Republic era comics, the ocean or the sea as a concept of the force. There's a religious, this is me doing my best bad impression. There's a religious order called the Falunasi who thought of the force as a massive ocean. They called the light side of the force, quote, the white current and the dark side, quote, dark tide.

And I find that beautiful language. And yeah, I just, what did you think of this ocean imagery? It's beautiful. We love an ocean vista. Yeah. Love to spend time at sea. Yeah, this is really, this is really lovely. And I like, first of all, hearing soul, like right before, think of a great ocean, say connect

to the force, have faith. Faith is going to be a recurring tenant across these episodes. And faith in what? Exactly. Faith in the Force, faith in Jedi, faith in someone you know personally. Right. And that those are not necessarily the same thing. Correct.

And actually might be an active conflict with each other. Right. And it also felt very key that he said it's uncertainty. because what were we just talking about? Control. And telling us here that soul is a character who embraces uncertainty, who is trying to counsel the people

in his charge and care to accept that uncertainty is not a part of life, but a part of the very power that they're tapping into is beautiful and really positions him as distinct from some of the Jedi who we will have notes on. So I love that.

Then we get in contrast to the ocean imagery this idea of fire because one youngling says life one says balance of them one says icy fire it grows larger consumes anything that tries to stop it totally fine don't worry don't don't put that young anyone at the Jedi temple has a follow-up chat with this youngling i would like that youngling to get some counseling um is what i would have to say about that i have a question for you do you think that there's any chance i don't even know if this makes sense but like do you think that this is okay this is just this youngling is is sense

this in the force, either because that is the part of the force that this youngling is attuned to or because of everything that is about to unfold. Do you think projection, force projection, inadvertent or otherwise was a big part of these two episodes? And I was wondering, like, did you think it was possible that maybe this youngling was sensing Saul's memory? 100%. 100% I think that. Okay. That he is always circling this harping on his life that he made. And the look that he gives her on second watch, the look that he gives her, It's not just, that's a disturbing thing for my student to say, but it's like sort of like, get out of my head. Yeah.

Did I send that your way? Prudernationally gifted child. Yeah, that was what I read there too. Lovely. His crisp little white robes and shiny boots look less out of place, I think, in the classroom setting than yours did on the trade fed ship. But here comes Vernester Rowe. Don't call her Vern. A person who has not touched a door handle in decades.

And we talked about a lot about this character in our prep pods in that this is like one of very few as far as we know characters established in canon who's here in the show. This is a character who shows up in the High Republic comics and books and has, you know, her own like teenage arc and is here as like a over 100 year old person looking great, looking pretty. fresh. This is an actress I really like. This is a character I have, I'm having a lot of trouble accessing. How do you feel? Same. So I thought this exchange was really emblematic of what worked really well for me and

then what didn't work as well for me in the opening of the season. Soul saying in this exchange that he's the fortunate one. He's the fortunate one to be taught by his. his students was so genuine and beautiful and, like, tells us everything about not only the affection that he feels, but the responsibility that he thinks he bears as a teacher. How much of that stems from regret? How much of it is passion? They don't just genuine.

They don't have to be mutually exclusive, right? But how has his relationship to that idea changed because of OSHA leaving the order? There's so much to latch on to in the span of half a sentence from, from, from, you know, from that perspective. And then, you know, later, obviously, we get to him saying, like, maybe I wasn't a very good teacher,

which we're going to talk about at length when we get to it. So that was, like, great. He looked like he was about to cry when he called OSHA devoted Padawan. Like, he looked like he was about to start crying. Beautiful. I cannot wait to learn about their backstory.

The fire, the saving, the recruitment, the training, the parting, everything. I want to know everything that happened between them. 100%. I thought in contrast, the, like, instant, I see I have underestimated your attachment to her line was just really odd. Like, it didn't, I didn't feel like I was in it enough with those two characters together. We had the history between them to understand how that would be the deduction based on one moment. Yeah. Other than our, the understanding that we do have that this is like a, a creed.

that the Jedi are always volleying back and forth to each other. You know, that way lies danger, that way lies peril. And so that was kind of emblematic, I think, again, of like the stuff that just felt a little bit off and a little out of rhythm in some of the exchanges across the episode. I think it's a tough character because her job is to be, like, obstructive, you know, like to be, you know, it's helpful if you're either Yoda. or Samuel Jackson for us to, like, you know, be excited about seeing the Jedi Council. But, like, the Jedi Council's job is to sort of, like, we talk, people talk about this all

the time in storytelling when you talk about something like, sorry, this is a weird comp, but like, breaking bad, people would always come after the character, Skyler White, and there are misogynistic reasons, but there's also this idea that she's a character whose job is to stop the characters from doing what you want. You want Walt to keep cooking meth, because that's the fun story. she's like, stop. So we want Soul to go after OSHA. We want to see them together.

And then Vern's whole role is stop, come back, come to a meeting, blah, blah, don't keep, don't chase May, come back, like all this stuff. So it's like a wet blanket character. And, you know, those can be done in a way that is a little bit more effective than it's done here. But it's a tough job. Yeah. Yeah.

And again, like I recognize that there's a little bit of a. dissonance in me simultaneously saying that I like that the questions about attachment are present here as a through line. But it was really about the exact delivery of that idea in this conversation that just pinged like oddly for me. And some of the other stuff with with Vernesser later to like we go from that active resistance that you're correctly citing into like, yeah, take, take OSHA with you. It's like, what? I don't. I don't know. It just, it was hard to totally understand, like, what was driving some of the decisions that the character was making. Certainly, we at least have this character as emblematic of, like, what the future holds for the Jedi Council in terms of concern with politics and optics, right?

She's concerned about political enemies. This is a little, like, teaser, amuz-bush for, like, the prequels. At the height of the High Republic's power, they were acting very independently from the Republic. but they are starting to worry about politics. And it reminds a lot of conversation between Mace and Yoda. The prison break happens is what happens next. It's a fun sequence and there's like plenty I could say. We are running a little long.

I just want to, like, what do you want to say about the prison break? Hmm. I was wondering, it's a parasite used to subdue violent criminals. It does weird stuff to your brain. this is diebook. I'm not you forgetting how they pronounced it. Diebook, diebook. I was wondering

because they make a point of showing us after OSHA saves the dude who the parasite was attached to, him like fluttering away into the air vent. And then when everything unfolded later on Carlac with the vision, I had a moment where I was like,

Did that parasite, like, latch on to OSHA's face? That's another doc. Like, is something like, yeah, is something like, el- and I'm eager to talk about what we think actually is unfolding with those dreams when we get there. But that was one thing. I was just like, really, like, focused on this little critter, this little fluttering critter. Maybe it'll come back later. But, yeah, I, too, was like, I would keep a firm eye on a thing that just skitters into the air.

Let's track. Let's keep an eye on now. Guess what? Anything that skitters, I want to know where it is at all time. You want to monitor. If it skitters, I don't want to lose sight of it. Okay. To your point about, like, faith in what?

This is where we hear, Oshah say, that she has faith in the Jedi. So that's an important flag for us. She's not just saying I still have faith in the force. Even after leaving the order, she has faith in the order, which is, like, notable because that's not the experience necessarily that we have with a character like Asoka leaving the order. Right. where she's like, this is not something

that I can participate in anymore. So that was really interesting. When she and Saul were united, there's like no enmity or bitterness there. You know, it's just like, yeah, I think we left. Okay. Did you feel that her complete inability

to access the force was surprising? Or, I mean, she can't bring Pip to her. Now she's been away from the order for six years. What did you read in this? Did you read maybe she was not very, was not powerful in the force? to begin with? Do you think this has to do with her time away?

Do you think this is an emotional and mental response disconnecting from the force like we've seen with other characters? How did you feel about this? I think it's blocked. And I suspect we're going to see it unblocked. Yes. Accessed again. And I wonder if this is the, you know, when yours's like when you thought, that

that, that, like, is it when you lost your force powers suddenly? And like, you know, we're no longer. able to paduan the way you had before? Okay, speaking of Padawans, is it totally normal? She stare longingly at hollows of your old Padawan. Why do you ask? I thought this was a perfect television scene. I love this.

Me too. Sol looking at his hollow of OSHA as his yearning. Current Padawan catches him. Good old Jackie Lahn. Oh, man. And then she's like, excuse me, why are you doing this?

This pastime encourages sentimentality and nostalgia and both of those emotions can lead to. And then Saul says, our memories are lessons. If we don't meditate on the past, she says we're doomed to repeat it. And I instantly love their dynamic. Like, I'm just like any moment with Saul

is just wonderful. A couple things I loved about this. Yeah. The soul part, wonderful. From Jackie's perspective, this struck me as right that like we should be meeting her as a character who on the one is kind of like what the fuck dude i just like kind of caught you cheating right in that inside of the are you going to look at hollows of me when i'm gone like what's happening here but like if but she's very pragmatic about it because if she were too jealous or too overtly driven by her emotional response then she would be the one who's guilty of the thing that she

is pointing out that that he runs the risk of doing so that that that i also just love when get to encounter the fact that masters have multiple paddouins. Like one of the reasons that I love the Claudia Gray master and apprentice novel is because we get to spend time with Rial Averos, who is Kuwaitan, who is Duke who is paduan before Quigon and like seeing how all of those characters are interacting. It's just kind of riveting. So that's, that's interesting too. And then we get to see obviously Jackie and OSHA interact with each other.

I think it's when we, when we think about this trio of Jedi who are set off to, uh, go on this fact-finding mission, and we've got Soul, Yord, and Jackie. Like, I think that this is our spectrum of emotion, right? Like, that Soul is perhaps too emotional for a Jedi. I like it about him, but we'll see if that gets him into trouble. Yord, very repressed. Very, very repressed. And then Jackie is some sort of, like, you know, in between, like, just right sort of thing, right?

Where she's, like, asking these questions. She's like, excuse me, rationally, we're not supposed to do this. but when he gives her example, she is, like, repeating the other half of the lesson. She is warm to him. She's warm to OSHA later. And I love the scene of them walking out of the room

because she's, like, Daphne Keen is just so, like, small. And so she's just, like, genuinely just, like, looking up at him, like, adoringly. It's just, like, very sweet. Okay. Anything, you know, she's alive. I can feel it.

I will. Good on him, not only for tapping into the force, but being like, hey, can we maybe just check rather than just assuming that she didn't survive the crash? I would also just like to say that she's alive, I can feel it. Feels like something May and OSHA should know about each other. If they are...

This is definitely a question that I have. Twins and or even forced diets. That they should know that each other is alive. It's surprising that they don't. Yes. But he says, if she is guilty, it is my failure. Let me take accountability. And this is just, I just need a tiny,

moment to say how much I love a failed Jedi or failure among the Jedi. Luke Skywalker, as I've discussed many times the last Jedi. I've failed you, Ben. I'm sorry. Adam Driver's. Kyle says, I'm sure you are. One of my favorite line ratings of all time. I'm sure you are. Yoda's saying the greatest teacher failure is, which is like my favorite Star Wars line. And then Luke's speech, Sharray, which is my favorite Mark Campbell performance when he says it was Me, I failed because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, a legend that mighty Skywalker blood. I love that sequence so much. So good.

I just think failure and guilt and remorse among the Jedi is such an interesting way for human emotion to bump up against this sort of like very restrictive, emotionless, like aspiring to be attachment less. but when you feel guilt or failure or all these other things, you are unmistakably attached, not only to your own emotions, but to who it is you failed. What did you do? Good old King Tomman

had to lock himself into meditation for 10 years because he's so failed and is so guilty. So like, you know, it's just my favorite thing. And I'm delighted it's here in a character like so. I love it. I love it. Absolutely wonderful to see. Wonderful.

What do you want to say about? Yord steaming his robes and taking his kit off. Anything? I think we covered it when we talked about his feelings about his drip earlier. I did like Jekies. She's like, it's not Yord. It's like the Jedi. That was good stuff. Jekylland is not yet a member of the Yord Horde.

Not even when he took his robes off. And I do actually have a theory about that. Okay, so Oshah wakes up gaspingly again. This is the second time. There will be a third. And we're inside a nightmare because, like, she doesn't immediately check on PIP, and that's how you know it's a dream. Because when she wakes up for real, immediately she checks on PIP,

hopefully making Mallory feel better about everything. This is a forced dream, and we get ghostly twin stuff as OSHA chases a vision into the snow. Very, of course, Luke, very Ray. chasing your own reflection and maybe at first that we think that that's what it is and then we're like, oh, twins, there is another.

It's another. Yep. Yeah. Hello sister. I actually really hate it in movies and TV shows when brothers and sisters greet each other as like

hello brother, hello sister or well you know brother or well you know sister. Like it's only there to let the audience know who they are or like how is our father doing or whatever? It's just like all be, except this kid who's playing Little May the evil sauce she poured over a hello sister delighted me i thought it was so funny um how did this work for you

i really liked this i'm not only very compelled by what is happening emotionally for both may and osha and then soul but and torben every character who was involved in whatever foul thing unfolded between these people but the nature of this dream got my theory brain racing. Because if you said this a few minutes ago, like, wait, they don't know that the other, it's not just that they don't know that

the other characters live, they don't sense each other in the force in a way that would make them wonder. So if May thinks OSHA's dead and OSHA thinks May is dead, it, I think eliminates the possibility that would be the first thing that popped in our mind here, which is that like May is force projecting actively deciding to appear

to her sister. That's not what's happening. Because May doesn't, wouldn't think to do that because she doesn't think there's a sister to appear to. I don't know if we have the same theory. So someone is sending that dream.

Yes. That's how it feels to me. It is similar to why Ray and Kylo were able to connect over for Skype in The Last Jedi. It was orchestrated by somehow Palpatine or Snoke actually.

It was somehow Snoke orchestrated. right. So somehow someone, probably someone tall, dark and helmeted, has sent this dream to OSHA, which makes me think, this is my favorite theory, that OSHA is the real target here, that Mays or both. Why not, why have one acolyte when you can have twin acolytes? If they're forced dyad, why not collect both or whatever? Or if OSHA is the real target all along and not May. Why did OSHA go with the Jedi and not May?

Is she actually stronger in the force than May is or something like that? You know? So. Yeah. And there's hints throughout gently issued forth by your, less gently by your, more gently by soul. That, uh, OSHA's got some shit she has not let go of. She's got some darkness. May has some lightness inside of her.

O'Sha's got some darkness inside of her for sure. Okay. We get the twin conversation on the ship where yours is like a twin. Jackie Lon's like a twin. Soul looks a little bit like I shouldn't have said that. You know, and then he says, you know, like she's definitely dead. And the way he says it here is... I saw her die.

Is like he has to believe May is dead. Because if May is not dead, which he actually within like the next scene has just sort of been like, yep, you're right. She's not dead. But in this moment on the ship, he's like, if she's dead, I, a bad, I did not just, like, whatever his involvement with fire is, I left her there. Yeah. And that's just, that's enough to make someone. Yeah.

Sit cross-legged and float in a bubble for 10 years, I think. So, you know. Yes. This was an interesting scene. The, right before we get to that part, I really liked the little, um, you know, um, you know, um, smile that crosses Saul's face when he says, you don't need to keep asking when Jackie's, like, permission to speak freely.

And we've heard that multiple times at that point. Like, again, he's a bit of a rogue, right? Because there are plenty of masters in the Jedi order who would be like, I grant you permission in this one moment only to speak freely. Make sure you ask again next time. And that's not who he is. And that's important for us to understand. So I really liked that.

Again, on the time frame front, like, this is where we learn that he was posted on her home planet 16 years ago. She left the order six years ago. They were together for a decade. Like, these people shared a decade of their lives. That's no small thing. The, not in her file. This is just the other thing I want to quickly hit

before we move to the next scene. Her twin sister is not in her file. How much have they buried what happened? That reeks of cover up to me. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's just, I don't know how we can have any other read on that.

And so, like, what's interesting about that to me is not just what will we learn, like who was involved or even if it wasn't an active decision somebody made to do something terrible, did they still brush it under the data banks? Soul is going to have the same questions we do, I would assume, I hope. And so like the idea that he is not only going to be confronting his own, his personal guilt, but that he will have some sort of shaken faith on that idea of faith in the order. if someone is complicit, someone he knows, someone he long trusted,

or is it just that these people were all this easily duped and bested by some outside force? That's another read that is also really dramatically interesting and certainly would not be the first time, even if it is earlier in the timeline than elsewhere, that that happened to characters in Star Wars. Like, no one thought it was worth mentioning that the kid they just brought to the temple had just had a twin sister who died. I don't know if it's like... He wouldn't think that was worth other people knowing?

I don't think it's, yeah. I don't think it's not worth mentioning. I think it's definitely like we hid this. He didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Listen, if I thought of you immediately when I, when we saw Pip, I hope you thought of me immediately and I know you did when OSHA runs her little ass into a crevice.

Snowy crevice. Instantly. Terrible. Instantly. Instantly. Um. Listen, Yord, again, quick on the trigger with the lightsaber. This time he's using it a bit as a flashlight.

Yeah, sick. Yellow saber. Very cool. Phenomenal. I love yellow lightsaber. He's using it as a flashlight. Yes. But still, he doesn't like ever put it away.

You know what I mean? Even when they break out to the other side where there's actual daylight again. Okay. In this moment, when OSHA's backed up to the edge of a cliff, were you thinking of the fugitive, or were you thinking of the leap of faith moment from the last crusade? or what flavor of Paris and Ford moment did that give you? I went to leap of faith first, but then I went to the fugitive. And then when you rewatch it with a fugitive in your mind, the prison transport crash where she could have gotten away

if she hadn't saved a criminal is exactly, of course, what happens to Dr. Richard Kimball in the fugitive. I love this. I love this. Though, of course, instead of tumbling out, electively, she like, okay, so this was weird, like, I couldn't tell, but here's my question.

Was this deliberately weird? Like, is it just odd and she slips and, like, is actually just supposed to kind of be her losing balance and it's falling off an icy cliff? And it's like, oh, that's, okay. It almost seemed to me like she was pulled. Oh. Like, force pulled.

Like, the way her foot moves, I watched that so many times because I thought this was so bizarre. It was like, if she was something, someone or something pulling her? Interesting. I don't know. I would like to mention. I don't have any answer for you.

I think it was just sort of like clumsily executed, but I don't really know. She falls out the cliff in a way that doesn't make a ton of sense to us necessarily. But like I would just like, if it were me, I would just have like a section of the snow give way underneath her rather than her just like tumble over her feet over the side or whatever. Before she does it, so I'll like sags in relief when he first sponsor. And it is so lovely. And then he just like reaches out and like force grabs her and yanks her up in a way that is just like not since Colin Farrell and Fantastic Beast and where to find them. Have I been like so dazzled by someone doing something that like we've seen a million times?

Which is like, you know, Colin Farrell's wand work in that movie where he's just sort of like, I'm going to put all the sauce on it I can. that's how I felt about this like yoink up. I was just like, this is phenomenal. Phenomenal force. Yeah, absolutely. Really captivating. And also that moment, like he's these gauntlets that he wears and and Yord has them too that is just like a really cool like look to it.

Yeah. That moment too of OSHA being like positioned in stasis for a second there, flat. We get like the same. positioning for May in her fight with soul, but like with the opposite intention. In this case, he's above pulling to try to save. And in the other instance, he's above holding her there to try to win the day. So that was really interesting too, visually, that parallel, but also then that contrast, which I liked.

And I really like to, like, this was what you alluded to earlier, where he very quickly goes from like, oh, no, to accepting the twin thing, which. I believe you. But the I believe you. Exactly. And the way he has, what's the word that he emphasizes? You. Like, I believe you.

That's what convinces him. Please protect him. Very sweet. It is very sweet. You're super bummed. He does not get to use his sick yellow saber. Jackie Elon, pretty bummed. She's not good to use the cuffs.

And here we go. It's just a dude on a rocky outcropping being a guy. Just to bro on some rocks being a pal. Slad being a Sith. They quickly mollify my crevice fear with an ocean vista. Love that for us. This is one of the moments where there's several of them. We're like, we're in a real place.

We're actually on a beach. We're not in the volume. The waves are crashing here. It looks very cold. I hope everyone was well-dressed. It feels a bit octo-y, but I think it's not. I mean, it's definitely not. And then Maywatches is a helmeted and cloaked.

figure with a distorted voice says, Steve, will you play our first clip? The Jedi live in a dream. A dream they believe everyone shares. If you attack a Jedi with a weapon, you will fail. Steel or laser are no threat to them. But an acolyte,

an acolyte kills without a woman. Anecalaite kills the dream. Dude. Steel is no threat. Tell that to Indara. Do you want to do your Saul-Garra impression here? Wise deception. Four dollars.

Yeah. It's, listen, how are we going to talk about this character? How have we decided we're going to talk about this character? So the, I think we have two choices because the, the subtitles label this character, Stranger. So we could say Stranger. Also, in episode two, we will hear Chimir and May, when alluding to this figure, say he or master. Master. So, yeah, he.

That won't get confusing at all. I hope you can hear the Catholic Age. Venom helmet, dude. Here he is. His stuff here. His voice sounds a little familiar to me, perfect. But like, that's fine. Okay.

So what do you want to say about this wonderful speech that closes episode one? I mean, this was great. This was great. Like, we caught right from the sole OSHA reunion to this stranger with May. So we have this juxtaposition of... We get it again later in episode two. This sort of like master apprentice juxtapation. Yeah.

Exactly. Multiple masters and apprentices. and what those relationships are like and what sort of lesson is being heated or passed down. We have to wonder right away if this figure, the stranger, is also...

Like, what is the... What ultimately is the pecking order? Is this character also serving somebody else? Mm-hmm. Or is this the top? This could be the apprentice and there's a Sith master out there somewhere.

We don't know. Yeah. You know, because... This idea of killing the dream. Very comfortable. compelling. Yep. Save the rebellion, save the dream. Remembering what Palpatine says to Anakin, as we like to do. He says, Anakin, if one is to understand a great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi.

If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the force. This different point of view. This sort of like, we talk about Jedi propaganda. the Sith propaganda. Like, what are the Jedi? You know, they're dreamers. There's going to be a positive, you know, association there if you're maybe a Targaryen. But like, here, you know, we're trying to kill the dream, not just because we're evil mustache twirling villains, but we believe the Jedi way is the incorrect way and ours is the correct way. All right. Anything else going to say about the Sith? The Sith, you know, they're here. Their sabers are red. Get used to them. Like, here. Here they're the. Here, they're they are in our story. Love to see a Red Sabre Ignite. Despite in the Phantom Menace, them saying the Sith or extent they've been for nearly a millennium, here we are in the gaps of the story. There's a little Sith uprising.

The question, and Leslie has addresses in interviews or whatever, because plenty of people are like, does that mean everyone who sees the Sith, like, dies before they live to tell the tale? Like, what happens that there's Sith in this story? and 100 years from now we can have a Jedi council say what do you mean the Scyther here? You know, like how does that work?

I say, tune in to find out because I'm certain that the people will make the show definitely thought about that. Yes. I agree. Okay, part two. Revenge justice. Revenge justice.

Meanwhile, at a local Jedi temple, what do you want to say about this? We got a text from CR being like, I'm going to start a podcast called local Jedi temple. And he should. He should. Peace time or not.

High Republic era or not. The security set up at this local Jedi temple is shameful. Laughful. On Olegga. Shameful. It took a local child two seconds to spark the infiltration. That is that May strolls in a second time. After this like security breach.

Yeah. She just, right. walks in again later. Oh, man. This is where we get to meet Master Torben, Tom and himself, for the first time. But the conversation between May and Torbin

takes place in a later scene. So maybe we talk about the Barash Vow and what passes between them and your thoughts on the wigs or perhaps that will wait to wig watch in the next scene. This is just a glimpse here. Because May has to flee

because she's detected. Late, but eventually. Eventually. And she does some wirework out of the skylight. Love that for her. Okay. OSHA wakes up. This is the fourth time we've seen OSHA wake up, maybe talking about dreams and dreamers.

OSHA wakes up, not gaspingly this time, gently on the ship surrounded by the other Jedi. She is tank-topped. Tattoos there. I texted you full Starbuck Corps. Yes. What were your Starbucks vibes coming off of OSHA here? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean...

Starbucks from Balas, Stargallactic and not the coffee. Okay. Right. Just making sure. Good clarity. I was waiting for Seoul to come in and say, what do you hear, O'Sha, for OSHA to say nothing but the rain? Like, seriously.

And I loved that. I loved it. Should we get this tattoo? We have... It's going to have to wait. It's like 10th in line of all the other tattoos we're supposed to be getting. Okay, Jackie Lawn and O'Sha have this moment. I think it's flirtatious.

And if it is flirtatious, it might explain why Jackie Lawn is not very interested in shirtless Yord. And if it's flirtatious, it might speak to why Yord might be excited if O'Sha has a twin. She has a twin? Is her twin interested in dudes? I don't know. I don't know. It seemed a little... I caught some vibes here.

It's Pride Month. I would just like to celebrate. Right. Yeah. Two young, a Patawan or an ex-Pada-one enjoying each other. Yord is not having a, straight up having a bad time, right, with this quote-unquote twin theory. He is not in theory corner with us. He doesn't enjoy it.

No. He's not a fan. He likes when TV seasons drop as a binge. He's like, why would we need to talk about this week after week? I don't understand. Verzal in on the Twin Theory and she's like, as you pointed out, take O'Sha with you, she might be helpful, go to Olegia, find out who's just strolling into the Jedi Temple without much of mus or fuss. And our colleague, our beloved Ben Lindbergh and his recap of this episode called May's murderless Arias Stark-like.

But we just, and it is. And I hope that May does go to sleep every night, muttering Indara. soul Torbin Torbin Torbin Ornick Anyway

Yeah But it's also We're also doing Kill Bill Which is the overt The overt reference That Leslie Helen Has mentioned

Since the dawn of this project She called it Frozen meets Killbill We understand the Frozen A bit better That we understand That there are

Sisters At the center of this story Yeah And maybe the Evil One Isn't as evil As we think

Or whatever But The Kill Bill Vengeance list is, you know, straight up the text here. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. The professor is always welcome and so is the bride. Yeah.

The bride is always welcome. Yeah. Let's put some respect to her name. I agree. Sorry, Hanso Leisaper Me? Okay. Soul wanting Oshah to join on the mission made sense to me because he knows her. He believes in her.

And he probably also, I assume, thinks it is important for her to be a part of this for her own understanding and healing. Vern thought she was a murder 12 seconds prior. Weird. Yord saying May would not have the training to defeat a Jedi master

was just another bullet point on the ever-growing ledger of like classic beat-for-beat, note for no Jedi hubris, exactly the kind of blindness and arrogance that ultimately allows Palpatine to rise.

But also it's not just like she couldn't be, She's like, if we didn't train her, who could have possibly trained her, right? We're the only ones who are doing force training, right? No one else could do this. If they were, we would know. It's, it's, it's, this is like going to be a pattern that repeats. I also just thought like soul saying to your, don't let fear affect your judgment was

interesting because it didn't have the tinge of you're on the path to something damning that it often does when a Jedi master invokes fear. So I thought that was yet another point of distinction for soul's character. Gentle parenting tactics. And I love that for him. Hold on your hats and glasses. Here comes to Mani Jacinto. It's just a dude being a guy being an apothecary.

And we're very excited for him. This is wonderful. When Maywaxon throws something out of him and he just like pratt falls out of bed. And I'm just here to tell you. And I was already, I'm always in the bag for Manage of Zinto. But every single thing he, he's just like, he's just like, he wants to tell him. but every single thing he does delights me

in all of his scenes in this episode. Just absolutely incredible. He's bumbling, he's fumbling, he's fumbling, he's pratt falling, his hair's in his face. He's very, like, stoner concerned about May being out all night. He's wearing the clothes of the old apothecary. What happened to the old apothecary?

Nothing good. Nothing good. I'm going to go with nothing good. Nothing good. Nothing good. This was a great introduction. It was interesting to see how May behaved with him in turn. It was quite rude to him and dismissive, which, you know, we're going to theorize on who we think what we think is going on here.

We've been theorizing from the start about this. So we don't. Minute one. So we're like we're not going to pull our punches on what our favorite theory is, is that Manit Jacinto as Khmer is, is the Sith master, or at least the, If he's not a master, the guy with a saber on the rock. He's under the help. Yeah, he's under him. I would be astonished if that's not what happens.

If you watch these scenes with that read, everything works out. He is counseling her like a master would from, like, from the cover of this bumbling, fumbling character. He's doing nothing but giving her. In a way that just a supplier would not. No, he's just giving her advice and telling her how and successfully training her on how. on how to defeat the Jedi. I'm reminded so much of a rings of power scene that was a real alarm bell for us about spoilers for season

one of Rings of Power, about the real identity of hot sexy Sauron, who was also Hal Brand, who next season will be Anatar. In that jail sequence, Hal Brand says to Galadryl, in an instant like this... It's Galadryl here. It's Galadryl here. He says, in an instant like this,

it seems to me that you do well to identify what it is your opponent, most fears. And Galadriel says, and exploit it? And he says, no, give them a means of mastering it so that you can master them. And you and I were like, evil guy. This is an evil guy. Right. So like, it's slightly different with Chimer because he's like, you know, he's one of the, one of the bad guys. Yeah. Yeah. One of the bad guys to be able with. She knows he's bad. But he's pretending to be a low-ranking bad guy. We think he is the top main bad guy going on. Find his weakness, he says to May.

She says he doesn't have one. He says everyone has a weakness. But also to further praise manager since his performance, the way he throws this stuff away, he's like doing fiddling with this lamp, like doing lamp business. And then later cocktail shaking business, like to distract from the fact that he is counseling for, you know? He is so casually effortlessly dispensing this worldview on humanity. So good. really, really, really good. And this was like, this builds right into the,

when May asks him to make her the poison. And she says she's running out of time. Like, what do we think that means, literally? Like, is there a clock on this quest? The Sith scavenger hunt has to be completed. Is this like draft day? In a month. I don't, sure.

Before the full moon. Something like that. You mentioned that, and I will kill one of them without a weapon. and please the master. We discussed that already. But let us hear. Do you think that this requires, is it an interpretation?

Yes, an interpretation. But do you think that this will mean killing without a weapon means using the force as your weapon, which means reaching a new level of dark side corruption? Right, because if it's killing without the weapon, I mean, I guess poison's a weapon, but I feel like if I were writing this,

I would be more specific than this, because I feel like getting someone to poison themselves is somewhat killing someone without a weapon, but obviously it doesn't count. So, yeah, I feel like it's, as Vader did, it's cracking someone's neck with a force, something like that, you know? I think that's the implication here.

So we get the kill list, right? You know, we get Saul, we get the wookie, we get Torben. This is the list. This is the remaining list. Here is Khmer, essentially quoting the Sith code, Steve will you play this?

Yeah. I do really believe that, though. Everyone has a weakness. The Jedi justify their galactic dominance in the name of peace. And peace is alive, I know. Torbin is not this serene. And as you say, impenetrable meditator. Like every Jedi, he only thinks he's found peace.

What he really needs is something only you can give him. Oh, man. Absolution. The sound of a cocktail shaker. Poison. Cocktails. It will whip it up some poison. All right.

So there was so much humor in this stretch when he, the way he transitions from saying he needs a drink to, don't you think what we do is so stressful? Yeah. It just killed me. It's really good. Lawless. I thought this framing was fascinating. Absolution, not punishment. Yeah.

Freeing them. Now, this obviously connects to what you were talking about earlier with this very religious cloaking of the doctrine. Is this what he personally really genuinely believes? Is this some sort of manipulation? Is it a tactic framing it this way? And then there's the other framing around peace where he's talking about the galactic societal state, but he's also talking about the inner state, which is very much, in addition to the actual, like, parallel language that he's using here from the Sith guy. that idea, that like inward state of being, that's very Sith code coded pieces of why there is only passion through passion. I gain strength.

Through strength, I gain power through power. I gain victory, et cetera, et cetera. And like this idea of critiquing the Jedi who deserve critiquing for their dominance. Dominance is the word. But then believing that you can and should. be the arbiter of justice and absolution is just like base hypocrisy, which is the Sifth way. So I love that as well. Like really pings what would Gandalf say here, you know, do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. So this was all great. This scene was fantastic.

Would you say only a Sith deals in absolution? Or would you kick me off the pod? Now I will. Absolution. And then, yeah, May says, please don't tell the master. He's like, yeah, sure. And we're like, Because he is the master. Or to your point, he might be an apprentice and there might be a Sith master out there somewhere. Either way, like, we just feel very strongly that he's not just chimere supplier. He outranks her. Getting drunk and napping on the guy dude.

She's trying to, like, threaten him. And it's cute. And so then there's like, that is interesting to me, too, is why is he choosing to enact this farce? Yeah. What is the like show me who you truly are driver of why he is behaving this way? And what will what he sees me form who he wants. We're going to get to that. Okay.

This literally happened to me. That feeling when you, when dad sees your tattoo. My dad, when I, I don't know if I've ever told you the story, but I like hid my, I got my tattoo right when I was, my first tattoo right when I was 18. and I like, just kind of casually hit it for my parents. Just like... Did you wear very long sleeves for a very long time? It was on my ankle. So I wore like...

Okay. The wrist tattoo was not the first one. No, no, no. And so I just like wore like, you know, like jeans or whatever around them. And then I was like at home for Christmas. I was wearing PJ pants and I was like sitting on the ground and like the leg of the PJ pan had just sort of like ridden up enough. And then my dad, this is like actually very sweet. He was like, he was just trying to be act so cool.

which is very similar to what Saul does here, where he goes, oh, I didn't know you had a tat, is what my dad said. Oh, I didn't know you had a tat. Oh, man. Okay. So if we think, to your earlier point about mirroring master and apprentice scenes, if we think what we just saw with Chimer and May was a sneaky master and apprentice scene, then we flip right to Solenocia, right?

And we got this email from Alex, who says, I love the call. I missed it. I feel like we haven't been using enough. Alex says, we've seen a few of the former Padawan and master dynamics on the small, live action screen now, and this brought some needed variance. Both the Asoka Anakin and Sabine Asoka Mind, a fraught and frayed dynamic, the former being much more successful, in my opinion. I thought it was a nice development to start with a scene with Soul, Jackie, and the hologram,

to set up Soul's relationship with the past and attachments as a much more nuanced view than we've known, and it pays off when Sol and OSHA have that interaction about the tattoo. You can feel the warmth soul has for his former Padawan without shame, and you feel it was reciprocated by OSHA. It's like a former boss at a company you left for being a toxic mess, but your manager was never a problem. Meanwhile, if you lay out how their menastic order, child force service kidnaps children, and tells them not to feel anything while training to become Superman cops, it becomes pretty evident there might be something rotten in the temple on Corrassan. So that was sort of like a hybrid of Alex's full email.

But like what do you like how do you feel about the different master former Padawan relationship we're getting here? Yeah. I mean, again, like if we if we think we're seeing what we think we're seeing in the prior scene and part of that appears to then be like a not just the active test that may know she's undergoing in this trial, but the secret test of like how are you conducting yourself, then this is the opposite. This is like when there's a really cute.

little moment when Osha says, and you hate it. And Soul kind of like, he says, it's like gentle little laugh and says, it doesn't matter what I think. And both sides of that are important. Because her saying that that way shows us that she actually does care what he thinks, you know? And from the little laugh to the substance of what he's saying, it's like, he's, I think, genuinely like touched and flattered that she would say that, right? And that she would care. And he also is then going to give her permission to be her own person, which is just completely like anathema in this in this world. And so that's like really lovely, really, really lovely. And it's a subtle way to show us that distinction, but an important one.

Let's hear this conversation between them, please, Steve. I wanted to save you both. What happened that night wasn't your fault, soul. I've told you that. You did. And I have made peace with what happened on Brand Dock. I know you have. That was a lesson you tried to teach me many times to accept what I'd lost.

And I wasn't a very good student. Perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher. Incredible shit. Please stay tuned for the conversation with Leslie where she talks about this. I don't want to spoil what she says, but I thought it was absolutely incredible. I've told you that you did. I know you have. Again, as I mentioned earlier,

this is a retried of a conversation they've had many times. It should be one of those moments where we're like, why are they having this? But it's not, to your point, about its emotional vitality. And also, the repetition of the conversation is part of the point of the conversation, which is like, no matter how many times we process this, this is a thing that has wounded us in a stubborn way

both of us, right? Like, you know, I have made my piece of what that happened on Brennan. I don't think he has. She says, I know you have. I don't think he has. Certainly not. And, you know, and then she acknowledges that he tried to, you know, teach her how to let go of what she had lost. Her mother's, her sister, her entire village.

And she's like, evidently could not do it. Is that part of what's blocking her in the force right now? Is this exactly why she left the order? You know, all of those questions come up for us. It's so interesting because there are very, like, emotional, spiritual, mental, centric questions there. And then there's also, like, in tandem, a plot question that this brings to mind for us. You know, we hear, like, she must have survived somehow, even though we saw her. Well, like, was she, again, like, this question of was someone else's deception at play?

Was this an accident that then spawned something bitter in its, wake, like, plots and schemes, schemes and plots. And to pair that question really nimbly with these emotional questions is just incredibly compelling. I think also, like, the other thing here, in addition to what you said, which I agree with about it, it does not seem like he has made his peace with this. Certainly, if we think that the youngling in the temple is, like, sensing his trauma. This is very present on his mind.

What, wanted to save you both? like what choice did he have to make and then what's what put them in a position where that choice had to be made but also like I think everything you said about failure and the role of failure in Star Wars earlier it was beautiful and I agree and I love those conversations in those scenes I think like often in Star Wars we get to a moment where a character admits that they weren't that they didn't do enough too late right like when when Obi-1 is saying I have failed you Anakin I have failed you it is too late yeah and that that struck me too that soul is saying perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher a very hard thing to say

out loud a hard thing to admit to another person a hard thing to admit to yourself a hard thing to consider whether or not it's true when it feels like there's still time yeah which not everybody does in star wars or in real life like that's a hard thing to be able to say that to somebody else it's a vulnerable and scary thing and so i i loved that and the the contrast of that between that and like And I don't blame him for it, but the way that, like, Obi-Wan talks to Anakin on Mustafa, right? And it's never, like, it's never really like I failed you. It's like, you let the side down. You were supposed to do this.

You were the chosen one. You were supposed to do this. You really, like, you know, not like, I fucked up and didn't do what I was supposed to do. Obi-Wan, I'll get to that eventually. Okay. The Barish vow. this is a, you know, this is a canonical, I don't think you need to know all the details of it

to understand what is going on here, but is there anything detail-wise you want to say about the Barish vow? I think if you're getting the sense that this character shut himself off from the world because he is carrying a great trauma, you're good. The vow, the oath,

we love to talk about an oath or a vow in a story, what does it mean to take one? What does it mean to make one? Are you making it with yourself? Or are you making it with someone else? Swear and swear, Joe. Make you swear and swear, I'm going to be back in Westro's so soon.

But the penitence. Yeah. And cutting yourself off. You can go to a swamp. You can go to a rocky island in the middle of the ocean or you can just lock yourself a little bubble and meditate. You can hang out in your cave? Yeah.

And the boiling desert. Oh, yeah. And work at the meat factory? And then take breaks from the vow to slice meat under the sun. But yeah, you were communing only with the force when you were taking this vow and you were cutting off everyone and everything. And so what would lead a character to do this? And we learn that, again, it's like what we learned about the amount of time? It's like, this is not just what time passed before he made this choice,

but then how long Torben, Tommin, has been doing this. And so, like, everyone else accepting that this is the thing he did is also interesting because, you know, when Sol arrives, he's like, well, he'll talk to me. Not like, wait, what do you mean? He's taking the brush vow and isn't speaking to anyone. So that's interesting, too, just because, like, I do wonder how much of this would be, like, the kind of monk-like aspect of life for some Jedi. This is a choice that people make and someone at some point, you'll cross paths with

someone who does this. And like whether a character like Sol who knows a character like Torbin would be like, what led you to make this choice? I'm curious. Like, I wonder if there was a moment where he wondered. I mean, I'm interested in that part of it too. But what did you think of the actual exchange between May and Torbin? She pulled him out of the stance.

Dean Charles Chapman, our guy, gets very little to act. do, but we expect again that we will see him. We know we will. We've seen him in the trailer in a different way. So we will see him in the flash brown. I believe both eyeballs intact as well. Yeah, exactly. I've been waiting for you, May, through one dead eye. Just... Give me a chill. I loved it. Just like the way he just, like slowly descended and then just sort of like, yeah, the way he delivered that. Forgive me, we thought we were doing the right thing. Dude. What happened? What happened? I wonder how long we're going to have to wait to find out. like, will that be a reveal at the end of the season?

Will we learn that soon? And then the story will unfold for that. I'm so curious how this is going to be structured. I really can't wait to find out. I do have to think that at least some of those flashbacks are coming early because I think, as is the case of the All of Star Wars properties, a lot of the trailer footage we saw came from, like, the first half of the season, you know? So, like, I don't think we have to wait until, like, the finale to see Tom and in his wig. Other wig.

Right. OSHA and Seoul, like, both follow the force to get to May, though down different passageways. And again, if OSHA is, like, sort of blocked in the force, who's sort of pinging her radar to go down the back alleyways to get to the body? We hear a little, like, a little baby Mae OSHA whisper, like on Carlac to draw her. I mean, this just feels like puppeteering. Yeah, exactly. sneaky. So, all right, unless it's just like, I don't know,

mysterious forced twin tingle, which it might be, who knows? It could be. It definitely could be. But I like the puppeteering. I don't think so. Derry. Okay. Yord is in on the twin theory because he finally in on the twin theory because he literally

followed Oshed down a hallway. So welcome to the party, Yord. And then we go to just a dude being a guy dumping his trash in a immersion's basket. This cracked me up. This is so funny. Just gosh it on his snack walking down the street, dumping his trash into the basket that somebody is carrying as they go about their hardworking day. This is so funny. So perfectly casually shitty.

I loved it. Yord, ever eager to pull the trigger on something is so excited to use a stun gun. But Jackie has a better idea. Jackie comes up with the undercover twin gipet. Yoritus was great. Shocked and appalled that this is the plan. But Pip is in. Pip is all in.

Pip is like... A plan that involves violating 13 precepts? Pip gets to be the hot mic. Oshha does... Sweet Pip. Pretty unconvincing may cosplay as far as I'm concerned. Let's just call it what it is, which is slapdash nonsense. Both from OSHA and the Jedi.

this is the prep work. Really? Now, I'm sure it feels very time sensitive. They need to get in there while they have a window. But like, this is it? It's not a great plan.

She's found out in an instant. Well, but that's what I love. Okay. That part is great. When do you think? Kamir, if you want to call him that, knows it's her and not men. Exactly what you put down in the dock

is what I thought as well. Because the second, So there's the hello, hello, hi, the second high. There's the uptick. Yeah. There's the change in intonation. And he's like, part of it was so funny to me about this. You just know that he's like, not only are you speaking differently, carrying yourself differently, wearing an apostor's cloak.

You did not check in with Damon Targaryen on murder cloak etiquette at all. You don't have the forehead tattoo. The like. But why are you not? like laying into me for drinking on the job and napping or it. Everything is all right from the job. Yeah. What's going on?

So here's my, I'll lob a question back at you then. If he's on to her that quickly, which it seems like he is. What do you make of him then? Because they're waiting on the other end for the confession. Yeah. What's his motivation to say?

Which he really offers. The poison. Did use the poison. The master. All of this. Is it that he is just totally utterly unafraid of the Jedi they are no threat to him or is it that giving them that intel is actually part of leading

I think it is these characters toward the the goal that he, the end goal that he wants. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I think this is, I think he's got plans within plans of than plans of plans. Like, teams and plots? Yeah. Both.

Plots and schemes? The way he says, you look exactly like her. I could do an entire podcast about this. It is so predatory. So I talked to Leslie about the use of the word Like seduced to the dark side as part of it It's just like it's very Charge and it's scary

You know? Because he's like he's playing the fool And then immediate switch to this like Predator character And then immediately back to the fool When the other Jedi is like storm the shop Watching this If you believe that he is a Sith

faster some kind. Watching him like fumble up, please don't wipe my mind. Please don't do all these things. Like, his way around the shop is so funny. The fact that they all just leave him there is sheer incompetence of the highest order.

I just don't know what else to say. Just so weird. They just all leave him there. You're on perimeter. Jackie, you got to get to the ship. O'SHA, you're with me for no reason. and we'll just leave him our best lead alone in his shop. Okay.

Anyway. Ludacrous. I needed one like side exchange where someone was like, let's like let him go so we can try to follow him. Or you're on perimeter. Make sure he doesn't leave the shop, I guess, from both entrances or whatever. I don't know. I will say on the comedy front very quickly. Man, he's just so funny.

When, because they've heard everything via PIPP, so now from our perspective, I've already this kind of planted information. Yeah. Soul saying, who is he? And he's the guy we're pointing to Yorne and saying, I thought he was with you. It was just hysterical. Just hysterical. Oh, boy.

I wonder if the mind wipe, because again, we have this question of like, how are the Jedi going to suddenly forget that the Sith popped up 100 years previous? is this planting of a seed of a mind wipe as a possibility of something people can do with the forest like a seed that will bear fruit later in the season? I don't know. That's just a question I have. Because it's not like a Jedi don't go.

They're not the men in black. They don't usually go around wiping minds, right? Like that's not a thing that they do. Right? So it's just weird for him to bring it up, I thought. Okay. Solvi Mae. Yort says I got a bad thing.

feeling about this. I don't like it. We're just going to move on. I don't want it. Sol and OSHA have a great conversation about grief of revenge that we heard at the top of this episode. Fantastic. But Soul ending it with this idea of like I failed to save her. I couldn't save her when you were children. Let me try now. Is this repeated Star Wars idea we love about like someone insisting on saving someone who everyone else thinks is beyond saving? Yes.

Ray with Ben Solo, Luke with Vader. I just absolutely loved this. And then this is, do you want to talk about the use of faith here? Who has faith in whom here at this exchange? She wants to kill you. OSHA says. And then Silver replies, have faith in May. Then have faith in me.

He says, have faith in May. And OSHA just sort of like tearfully, slightly shakes her head like a little bit. Then have faith in me. faith in me. This is absolutely beautiful. And there's such an intimate quality to how the relationships are driving these big sweeping,

potentially cataclysmic outcomes. I actually was thinking in the, look what revenge has done to her sister line. Like it made me think of Tachala and Zemo. Vengeance has consumed you. It's consuming them. I'm done letting it consume me that idea. So like how the characters,

because the past is so present. Like soul is being driven by the past here too, but he's seeking redemption. He is, this makes me nervous. I know you're feeling nervous. Like, he's seeking absolution, which is the thing that we heard. Kimmer and may talk about,

so that's a little bit scary. He's not driven by revenge, and he's brimming with compassion, which is the thing that took down in Dara. A weaponized. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, soul.

Okay. You know, I've just made my piece of the fact that Sol's not going to make it out of this season alive, so I'm just going to say, make it to the series finale, so that I could just like spend as much time with you as possible. That is my hope. Meanwhile, we get a caption,

just Pip trilling and morbling. That's just a thing that we get. Sol and May have this fight in the streets. This was dynamite. Wonderful. The first, like, catching by the ankle? Yes. Dude.

Wonderful. The only question I'm, I have in this fight here is she tries to she's going through the saber on his hip as we talked about. Like very similar in many ways to the Indara fight. She tries to pull the same move on him that she pulls on Indara with a hidden knife and it gets redirected away. Is your reading that Saul redirected it away or that Yord yanked it out of that Yord yanked. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I thought that it seemed like Yord pulled it off.

If Yord pulled her knife away, because it means two different things. If Soul did, it means he has a better read of her than Indara did. If your did it, then it speaks to more like stronger together. You know, we got to be a team in order to tackle this. Live together by the alone. Yeah, I love it. Love it. I liked when he said, because the fight is not only physical, there's the penetration, right?

There's the probing. Like, I'm sorry. That's not what I meant. No, no. That is not what I meant. The Jedi mind probe. I see your master's taking great pains to hide his identity even from you. That was interesting to me, obviously in terms of Theory Corner and all that, but like,

is that the kind of thing where when it's brought to May's attention in that way, it's going to build resentment? Like, why won't you tell me who you are? You know, does that lead to a rupture from May's side between May and he? The master is a stranger. He is him, but not in the meme way that people see. like Gutter Anderson is him. It's like he is him.

This is just we need a character name soon. So yeah, that was really interesting. That was interesting. And then we learned that May thought OSHA was dead. That's where we get it. And Sol really, really clocks her reaction to that, which I thought was interesting. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

May air bends a bunch of dirt and dust in their faces. She force pushes. Why has no one ever done this on a desert planet? And if the way that some people feel about the hold of maneuver, this is how I feel about this. Why have we never seen a Jedi do this? Maybe because they're too busy, like, chop it and slice them with their sabers to, like, force push a bunch of dirt in people's faces. But I thought it was a really effective move. Yeah, this was great.

May and OSHA equally unable to attack each other. OSHA, perhaps more significantly so, given that she has a big fuck-off gun and they're just sort of like, I see you, you see me. Just stun gun. Just stun your sister who you thought was dead the whole time. It's fine. And then you're together, you can figure out what happened. I just want to talk, May. Instead of continuing and where the plot is interesting,

soul has to go back to meet with the Jedi Council, which seems... I don't want that. I don't want it. I want them to now keep going on their mission. I know. It's a very silly move. Also, this was interesting because, like, we do get from Vern,

this kind of like, okay, the game has changed. The facts on the ground have changed. It's not just sure that your Padawan went rogue. now a trained outsider is responsible. From Seoul's perspective, this is where when I mentioned earlier, like the frustration, it's so palpable here.

He's like just outraged that this is the thing that they think makes sense. And the refusal, Vern's refusal to let Soul go to help Kalnaka, who is obviously by every aspect of the fact pattern. Next on the list.

Is like real weight, what the fuck is happening here? Is this like just incompetence? or what stuff. I hope the soul goes rogue and just goes there anyway. Yeah, because I don't want to go back to the Jedi temple.

Okay, Coruscant, who wants to go there? Not me. All right. Last but not least, it's just a dude being a guy being better than a highly trained dark side assassin at knife fighting. If Khmer is not supposed

be force sensitive, just a scavenger, just a traitor, just a scoundrel, why could he beat May with a knife in an alley? way.

He couldn't. That's the only read on it. That's the only answer. There's no way he could. It just, there's no way. It's impossible. It's not.

Next time on the Ackleight, we get a little tease, right? Kofar and a wookie. This looked nice. It looked gorgeous. The establishing shot was in grand amazing. Building a forest abode out of like a rock-covered shipwreck. Telling some scavengers to get off your lawn by breaking their gun.

Kellnock is my favorite. I love his little top nut. I'm a big fan. Okay. Theory Corner. I feel like you should go right from that to Whigwatch, honestly. Okay. Honestly, we're not even going to stop at Theory Corner because we actually have already talked about all our theories.

Sorry, we couldn't restrain ourselves. It's a theory show. I don't know that we're going to be able to wait for Theory Corner as we break down these episodes. All right. Let's go straight to Wigwatch. Do you wear wigs? Thank you, Stephen. You're the best. Yor did and Jackie have interesting hair. I'm actually not against it. Midnight Boys had some things to say about yours hair, and I support them. I like Jackie's little space mullet, David Bowie look. I think it's fun.

I don't understand what has happened to Dean Charles Chapman's wig situation. I don't understand it at all because I've also seen the flashbag wig and it is also kind of. founding to me. My only thought is that Dean Charles... That's the, like, curly one in the trailer, right? Yeah. His hat just looks so big. My only thought is, like, does he have a lot of hair that he needs for another role? And they had to, like, shove it under something?

Like, what's happening? I don't know. I understand that they were trying to make him look, you know, Dean Charles Chapman, like, if in the flashback, he's, like, a Padawan or untranged or, like, whatever, he's a young-looking guy. even like for his own age he looks younger than he is but the beard

and the receding hair it's just it was an astonishingly strange look to me so maybe that's just what happens to you if you sit and meditate for 10 years don't get a lot of blood flow happening I don't know anyway not my favorite

wig watch doing a lot of work on the twin front there's a forehead tattoo but there's also you know like the slightly different extensions happening on the wig watch that's all I really have to say I mean I don't know what else there is to say. Except that is Wake Watch. All right, we skip past it, but I think now we have to go to

Easter eggs. It's an old code, but it checks it. Anything you want to shout out on the Easter egg front, on the reference front, Mallory Ribbon. Death Watch heads will recognize Carlac. Yeah. That's a fun one. We spend some time in the Clone Wars. Animated television program on Carlac. So fun, fun to be back there and think of Soka. Think a bow. Always thinking about Boatatan.

I would say the fact that Ghost Dream May leaves no footprints in the snow the same way Force Projection Luke leaves no footprints in the salt on crate. Great stuff. So is it your theory that like Little Ghost May is like actually the stranger force projecting himself or just force projecting an image? Like is he pulling a full Luke or is he just like planting? images in her mind in your theory. Interesting. I don't know. I guess it would, I guess I like the idea that, yeah, maybe actively driving. This isn't like a self-driving car that someone just sends out into the world. Like, you're at the wheel. Yeah. I think I like that. Yeah. What do you think? I don't, I like the idea of, if that's the case, seeing like Little May like transform into,

that would be fun. You know. Yeah, I think that that seems right. Maybe just it. Okay. The Netflix subtitle award. Did you do one of these? The reason I put this in the dock is because there is literally a caption that says squelching. Yeah.

Should we just then make it addled brain distends wetly, like to honor the spirit of the- The squelching happens when the dibic is on the prisoner's mouth and it just says squelching. Yeah. Addled brain distends wetly. All right. Great. Or we could go with a sweeter end note, you know, Pip trills and warbles.

Charmingly. Yeah. Love it. Okay. And on that note, sweet pip. Speaking of Trilling and warbling. We're going to go to our interview with Leslie Hadland.

She was so generous with her time. So lovely, so wonderful. I just want to set up something really quickly, like pretty early in the chat when we're talking about May versus OSHA, this idea of like opposite ideologies and characters. I made a reference to Russian doll. And if you've never seen Russian doll, a show that Leslie Headland co-created with Natasha Leon, that show has a main character as played by Natasha Leon, but there is another character, Alan, played by Charlie Barnett, Charlie Barnett, aka Yord himself, the legend, the one-man

hoard, Charlie Barnett plays a character named Alan and Russian Doll. So anytime she's referencing Alan, she's talking about Charlie Barnett's character in Russian doll, and that's all you need to know. So let's go now to our chat with Leslie Henson. I want to start by asking you about, so we've been hearing for so long this Frozen Meets Kill Bill sort of elevator pitch that you gave. And now we can even better understand it because we know that this is a story about sisters and not just sisters, but twins. And so I wanted to ask you about sort of what the Star Wars' own rule of two, this idea of twins or forced dyads, if you you prefer, whatever.

Like, how does that feel integral to your idea of Star Wars? My instinct is always to start with one story or one character and then flip the paper and turn the paper over and start writing what's the opposite of that? Like when's the yin to that yin? Like when Charlie shows up in Russian doll and you're like, oh. Exactly. Like who we, I remember that in the writer's room. We had a breakthrough.

when we were working on Nadia fighting against this supernatural maze that she was stuck in. It was a real breakthrough in the writer's room when we started to circle this idea of who would like this. She very clearly is fighting against it and looking for a way out and frustrated by the repetitive cycle, struggling with the loss of control. And then when Alan, Charlie's character shows up, we thought, who's the guy that would be comforted by consistent, repetitive, what happened to him on that day or that evening, that he would want to keep reliving over and over again, that he would be interested in reliving and trying to, quote, get right. Once you have those opposing viewpoints, those opposing themes, then you've got conflict. If everybody's on the same side. Is there a story?

I don't know. In that regard, do you start with OSHA and then come up with May or start with May and come up with OSHA? Do you come up with them together at the same time? Well, definitely they were, like the pitch was the same time, meaning there is going to, we're going to introduce twins. We knew one of them would be Jedi affiliated and one of them would be SIF affiliated. It was a bit easier to write OSHA at the beginning because he is a very, a shout-of-water protagonist. Not unlike Nadia trying to untangle the jewelry

of how did I get in this position. What is it about my past that's contributed to my present position? Is it something that I did wrong? Is everything I know challenged by this new information? I don't want to say it was easier, but it lent itself to more conventional storytelling to write OSHA's character.

May was a bit more difficult. because you didn't want to just fall into the evil twin trope. This person completely is in conflict or opposing this other character. It was more if OSHA is questioning her inability to quiet her, quote unquote, negative feelings, then who is the character that would completely embrace her negative feelings? It was our goal to, while they were both created at the same time to answer your question, as they developed, we definitely ping ponged. We didn't want that cliche of like one of them is evil, one of them is good.

Even if it began that way, meaning one is capable of murder and one is a former Padawan who, as far as we know, is guilty of anything. And if she's guilty of something, it would be her internalized judgment of herself because of her perceived failure to become a Jedi. So we've got family, you know, the classic Star Wars. This is a story of, you know, good and evil and intergalactic war, but also just basically family issues, which I love about Star Wars. Well, that was a nice thing, too, of setting it where we set it,

because you couldn't actually have a galactic war. Right. You know, like, you know, so everything. Yeah. So everything had to be personal and the familial dynamic. Yeah. Something that Mallory and I go back and forth on, and I will say that I struggle with when I wrap my arms around Star Wars, is this idea, the idea of attachment and this idea that the Jedi had, that attachment is bad. And you've got a character like Lejean Jay's character, Soul, who is so tender and emotional in his connection to OSHA.

So I was just curious, you know, when you think about that idea of master and apprentice and attachment, how do you view it? it you personally and how does that work its way into the show? Well, as we all know, because the mythology of George creating Star Wars is almost as impactful as the mythology of Star Wars. We know that George was very influenced by, you know, Eastern philosophy. And it is a concept in Buddhism that attachment is suffering. But there's also the concept that suffering is inevitable. And if I were to criticize the Jedi at all, it would be the latter, that suffering is inevitable.

So when Yoda says, like, hate leads to suffering, I sort of disagree. That would probably be where I, I disagree with Yoda. I think suffering is inevitable. I guess that makes me a cis. Peace is a lie. It doesn't, you know, this is, I don't know if it's because I'm telling a story from the cis perspective or I just, I myself personally feel this way. it seems to me like you may feel like you're in balance. You may feel that you have freedom from attachment. But I think the Sith perspective is that's not possible. You know, the Sith may be wrong. The Jedi may be wrong. But I think writing a story from the Sikh perspective, a character like Soul is the perfect is the perfect culmination and example of the con of the incongruity of avoiding attachment or resisting attachment in order to circumvent suffering in order to stay away from

being seduced by the dark side. And I think this is so evident in JJ's performance. He's a light-sided person. He's a glass of clear water. And there's this drop of food coloring, let's just say, that's dropped into that clear glass of water. And that drop is OSHA. So I think you asked me originally before I started my... was what does it mean to me? Yeah. And I do believe, Bloney says this about Asoka and Anakin as well.

There's a tinge of a family dynamic or a more obvious connection to a family dynamic with Master and Apprentice. When Anakin calls Asoka Snips in Asoka, it's very much the older brother teasing the younger sister. Yeah. With Soul and OSHA, it's very, it's a profound connection.

that I have had with my father, which is there is love between the two of us. And my father passed away in September. I'm so sorry. Thank you. There's a love between the two of us. But in a way, that love, that deep love that's just ingrained in you is what can curdle and re-cave it on your own independence and your attachment. Like everyone can remember the time where they started to realize that their parents were people. I think everybody can really pinpoint that moment. Yeah. And I don't think OSHA is there yet with Soul.

I think she still sees him as this flawless master, this master that she failed, this father figure that she let down. What I think JJ does so beautifully and so, in such a nuanced way, is portray how much soul feels he let her down. I think in episode two, it's one of my favorite scenes in the show. is when he and OSHA are reconnecting. They're kind of reconnecting for the first time, meaning it's not a high-rest situation.

They're just sitting on the ship finally talking to each other. And OSHA says I could never calm my negative emotions. I guess I wasn't a very good student. And then JJ, in my opinion, this heartbreaking way, says, perhaps I wasn't a very good teacher. I would say that echoes so much of the paternal relationship between a father and a daughter. And definitely was my relationship with my father.

father when I said to him, you know, in so many words, you know, I guess, you know, I guess I'm not a good daughter. He, you know, he's able to come back and say, you know, perhaps I wasn't a very good father. And that's not a conversation you really get to have with your parents. But to me, that's the antithesis of the empire strikes back, the declarative statement, I am your father. It's more like I, it's almost like soul, soul starting point is Anakin's ending point. Oh, I love that. In that scene where Solanocia are talking about being master and apprentice.

She's wearing a tank top and she's got this tattoo on her arm and I wrote in my notes, Starbuck core. Is this Battlestar and Starbuck and its bow? In that look at all? I mean, what do you think? What's your thought on that?

Starbuck was in a lot of like my sister Inga and I do a lot of image work ahead of time. We make, well, she really make them. I just give her the, hey, pull from this, pull from this. I think it's a little bit of this thing. Starbuck was on the OSHA board many times. What else was on the ocean board many times? Oh, Katness was there a lot. A lot of times, Inga chooses editorial photos, meaning they don't

reference a particular person or actor. A lot of times because you don't want that to get stuck in people's head as it's supposed to look like, you know, this character's supposed to look like Jennifer Lawrence. Right. But we did feel that OSHA had that, that heart, but also that courage of like a catness, for example. But then the sort of grizzled, that's the right word, puffness of a, and likeability of a starbunk.

I know you have a Leia tattoo on your hand, which is sick. And I'm just curious. Yeah, it's great. I'm curious. I don't know. This might be too big of a question to wrap your arms around. But like, what have you loved about women in Star Wars? And what did you want to expand upon in terms of women in Star Wars in making this?

Well, when I think of the iconic female characters in Star Wars media, which the three that come to mine are Padme, Leah, and Asoka. What I think of, when I think of them is, what I think of is women put in very high-stakes circumstances that rise to the occasion, that they go through character transformations due to situations that they never thought were possible. I mean, I think Leah knew, Leah, of course, knew as a, as a, as one of the leaders of the rebellion. that she was willing to sacrifice her life to face off against the Empire Invader. But when her planet is destroyed that way, you know, who can deal with that? Who can deal with the love of your life murdering children? Who can deal with being accused of bombing the temple after years and years of faithful service and people knowing who she is?

So I hope that Mayanocia follow in the footsteps of those characters. I love that. I like that you just referenced the Clone Wars episode, The Wrong Jedi, one of our favorite Clone Wars stories. My favorite line from the trailer is not in these first two episodes, but is Jody Tursmith's character, mother Anasea, saying this isn't about good or bad, this is about power, and who is allowed to use it. So this idea of, we like to talk about this idea of democratization of the force. Like, who's allowed to use the force? Do you have to go through the academy? Do you have to be

Middiclorian Jesus named Skywalker? Who's allowed to be in control of this power? So obviously, part of this story is sort of muddying the waters on the Jedi or interrogating this idea of an institution and establishment. And I was just wondering if you could expand a bit up on your thoughts on that idea of who gets to use the force or, the Jedi as, you know, the villains of Asoka story to a certain degree in the Clone Wars. Unchecked power, whether good or bad, is susceptible to corruption. It just is. It doesn't,

I just, I just believe that. I mean, I didn't come up with this, you know? Like, it's like, you know, George put it in the pre-equals. Yeah. You know, as good as the intentions are, you know, the strength in the force had diminished so much that they didn't recognize that the cis had reemerged and were right in front of them. So at that point, I believe George, you know, and this is just my personal opinion, but what I believe George is highlighting by making that the story of the prequels, no power lasts forever. Not even the best, most well-intentioned, most benevolent institution can rely on their collective power to keep peace, who remain unchallenged, who, um,

protect themselves to protect others. Like it doesn't, it's so susceptible to either corruption from within or corruption from an external force like a city is. So I think the point being that in the Star Wars, in our Star Wars, everyone's worried, so worried about who's good and who's bad that I think the larger, the larger threat is, but who's allowed to use this power and who isn't. You mentioned sort of in the press leading up to this premiere that I know you're a long-time Star Wars fan, fan fiction writer, RPG player, EU enthusiast. You mentioned this idea of like, quote unquote, really big EU ideas like early in the series.

Is that something that you feel like has emerged already in these first two episodes? Or are we going to, should we still wait for this? Oh, well, the Barash Vow is one. name checking that. Obviously, there's a little nod to the prequels by calling the poison bunta instead of boonta. I have this whole background in my head about the huts co-opting natural resources, natural resources and, you know, naming plants after them. But pieces lie, obviously. Like, that's not a sanctioned canon thing.

It exists, but it's not necessarily. Like the Jedi Code and the Sith Code are not necessarily within the recent years of Star Wars. That's not necessarily considered something that characters are like repeating to themselves. It's more of a, that's more of a wink to the people that know what it is. Yord Fandar is the name of a character that we played in my RPG. Um, so my group was, couldn't believe that I had slipped him in the show. They were like, you named a character, Yord Fandar. It's like such a, it's such an RPG name, you know? Like, it's just like, you know, Yord Fandar of like, whatever, you know, so it just seemed like the silliest Star Wars name we could think of and now it's canon.

Yes. Um, obviously there's this like, it's, you know, the, the Jedi's not pulling their weapon unless prepared to kill is very much a, a, a, of, feeling I got from the High Republic, which is, it's not like they're fighting, you know, in our story, they're not fighting the Nihil or the I Hill, depending on how you say it. They are pretty much unopposed. So why would they pull out lightsabers? Why would they do that? I mean, I guess they could for like, you know, blaster shots or like maize knives or, you know, but they're not, it's not like they're other start, they're not other lightsabers to fight against. They're not battle droids to fight against.

So it's essentially criminals and civilians. So that thought led me to the martial arts of it all in the hand-to-hand combat, that they would eventually phase that out in favor of lightsaber training in order to not just become politically allied. Like, look, we have a lot of militaristic force in addition to being a bunch of monks. in 104, Basil is a tinnon, which is a species that I believe has only shown up in the EU. I don't think they're canon. Pablo was so happy we were using them.

He was so excited. He was like, oh, yeah, they exist and throw them at it. You know, definitely get him in there. This idea of seduction to the dark side, that word seduction, which can only come into play. more, given that the dark starters we've met so far in your story are a man Lissendberg and man age asinto, like, two of the most alluring people that you can put on screen. What do you want to say about sort of this idea of seduction, like, you know, versus, I don't know, even temptation or any other words you can use?

Why is word seduction so interesting to you? It's so funny that you say that. I brought that up a lot. lot in the initial pitch and then in the writer's room once we had convened them. Because when Obi-1 says it in episode four, and I was, you know, obviously a bit younger when I was watching a zygote, really? A zygote, yeah, you know, which was when I was seven, which was 20 years ago, I think that that was something that I emphasized over and over again. That was the first, when I, oh, sorry, what I meant to say was when Obi-1 says that in episode four, and I was a young girl. That was the first time I'd heard that word. I'd never heard

that word before. He was seduced by the dark side. And whatever it was, it felt very, you know, salacious, really. It felt, it felt, I knew it felt like, ooh, like it's, it, you know, kind of sent a shiver down my spine, even though as a young girl, there's no reason I would know what that meant. As I got older and I thought about that line more and more and, you know, watched, you know, Episode 4 more and more, I thought seduction takes two people. It takes a person doing the seducing, and it takes a person drawn in by that energy. He could have used so many different words. He could have used, defeated by the dark side, tempted by the dark side, like he said. But he said seduced. Yeah.

So there's a bit of age. on the part of the other person there. I mean, when I think seduced, when I was like younger and then 12 years old, I thought of those like romance novels covers. What is Fabio doing? Yeah. By the way, I thought of the poster for Empire Strikes Back

where Leah and Hahn are in the same position as Vivian Lee and Clark Gable for the Gone with the Win poster. Like that was seduction to me. That, you know, the way he seduces her and Empire Strikes Back. Like that feels like whatever that is is what the dark side did to Vater. I think what I love so much about a movie like The Last Jedi, which is one of my favorite Star Wars stories, is this idea of Ray and Kylo and this like, or Ray and Ben, if you prefer, and this like forbidden Skype calls for Skype calls, you know what I mean?

This like forbidden like bad romance sort of idea that is. Oh, when he, absolutely, like, and he says, join me. And then Adam says, please, in that really beautiful, you know, distinctive, intimate way. I feel like you could have ended the movie there, to be quite honest. I mean, I enjoyed the rest of it. But you could have been like, stay tuned to you, two years from now. You're going to find out what happened. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you know, I love you, I know. It felt like the I love you, I know moment to me. Totally. That, that, not that he was declaring his love for her in that moment, but that. he was saying, I need you. Yeah, please. I really need you.

Not I love you or even though I'm recalling that moment, but he's not declaring his romantic feelings for her necessarily in that moment. He's saying I can't exist without you. And if you don't come with me, I'm not sure I can do it. That's what I get from the pleas there. I loved how you talked about this. People get so confused between TV and film. and that bothers me

because I think TV is an important distinct medium and I saw you talking about this when it comes to your show and this idea of taking a beat to digest things like I think the quote you had was when you hear it's time for the Jedi to end when Luke says that

it might be nice to have a week after that to sort of process. To just chill out. Just think about it. Holy shit. Luke! Coming in hot. So in between

audiences watching episodes 1 and 2 and episode 1 ends with the Jedi live in a dream a dream they believe everyone shares if you attack a Jedi with a weapon you will fail

seal or laser and no threat to them but an acolyte kills the weapon and appellate an acolyt kills the dream what do you want

in an ideal world your audience to be chewing over in the week between episodes I mean I could go on forever about it but because you asked

about that line I mean how do you kill a dream you wake up So the question is, what's getting, what's, who's waking up? What's being awoken? And it's not Force Awakens, by the way, you know, but I think that that's how I, uh, I think that line is so beautiful. I mean, I wrote it. So I can't say that it's so beautiful. But I do think that that when we, when we, when we, you know, when I decided to use it as the, as the button of the, of the pilot, it felt to me like a nice setup for, this isn't really,

but yes she's murdering people but this isn't this this isn't really a corporal problem or the murder is like a side effect of the philosophical and spiritual destruction that's coming um so i would hope they'd think that i feel like the show has this could be a good thing or a bad thing. But I feel like the show has a lot of story packed in every episode. There certainly isn't a lot of vamping in terms of like OSHA's arrest. A lot of people that watched the show early on or like, you know, like yourself, saw them before. They said, I thought that was going to happen in episode, you know, three. I didn't realize that like 10 minutes, you know, five minutes after the murder happened,

she would be arrested for it. I figured it was this whole thing that was going to unfold. So I think having a break between each episode will be a nice way to digest the amount of story that's being delivered. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Thanks for all the extra time. Oh, you're so well done. Joanna. It's nice to see you again because I love you and I love your guys podcast, even though I'm going to have to stop listening to it. This has been your deep dive into two episodes of the Acolyte and an interview with the creator, Meady. A chunky little episode.

I think our future Ackleite episodes will be a little... Two episodes to break down and an interview? That's what I'm saying. Our future episodes will be a little, a little siftred. No such promises. He thought it was going to be four hours. We came in an hour shy of that. Listen, no such promises for future House the Dragon episodes, which is...

what's on the horizon on this feed. So stick with us. We're about to talk about dragons for a very long time, but we will also still be talking about mysterious Jedi twins. I'm excited to keep watching and chatting about the show. Oh, I know me too. And what did they do? What did the Jedi do?

I don't know, but I really want to find out. Okay. Thank you to Mallory Rubin. The other half of my forced I had. Thank you to Stephen Allman. who's invited to every single noodle party we ever have. Thank you to Jomi Adiniran on the social. Jomi is also invited.

And thank you to our Jinaranga Pal for his additional production work on this episode. He is also invited to noodle with us. We will be back. House of the Dragon next week. Until then. Bye. All pay off your home. Travel for life.

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